I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

Terror is glamour - not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers.

He knew what he knew: that the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could easily be real.

Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a place where ideas have been very subtly embodied for thousands of years. All literature started as sacred literature.

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.

I do think that there is such a thing as human nature, and that the things that we have in common are perhaps greater than the things that divide us.