Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.

It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.

Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?

I have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone ever asks about is the persecution. It may well be that's the last thing in the world they want to talk about. There were many years in which every journalist in the world wanted to talk to me, but nobody wanted to talk to me about my work. That felt deeply frustrating because I felt there was an attempt to stifle me as an artist. The best revenge I could have was to write.

Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

When you have children, your perspective on the parent-child relationship alters.

My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write.