A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

The way you write a screenplay is that you close your eyes and run the movie in your head and then you write it down.

Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.

We live in a frightened time, and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions.

The suicide bomber's imagination leads him to believe in a brilliant act of heroism, when in fact he is simply blowing himself up pointlessly and taking other people's lives.

I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect.