As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!

The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.

The writer presents himself to the blank page not with an open passport but an open heart.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.

When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen.

I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.