We never shape the world . . . the world shapes us.

It was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man.

The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.

When a child walks in the room, your child or anybody else’s child, do your eyes light up? That’s what they’re looking for.

Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.

Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow.