Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life.

Free-form games in which the player can make choices about what the game is going to be, become a kind of gaming equivalent of the narrative possibility.

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

We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to people living in the aftermath of the death of God and of tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride.

Human beings understand themselves and shape their futures by arguing and challenging and questioning and saying the un-sayable, not by bowing the knee whether to gods or to men.