I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

Beauty is boring because it is predictable.

The west has decided to channel money and effort into studying other customs and practices, but no one has really given other people the chance to study western customs and practices, except at schools maintained by white expatriates, or by allowing the rich from other cultures to study in Oxford or Paris. What happens then is that they return home to organise fundamentalist movements, because they feel solidarity with those of their compatriots who lack the opportunity for such education.

...we can only add to the world, where we believe it ends, more parts similar to those we already know (an expanse made again and always of water and land, stars and skies).

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.

Terrorism [is] a biological consequence of the multinationals, just as a day of fever is the reasonable price of an effective vaccine . . . The conflict is between great powers, not between demons and heroes. Unhappily, therefore, is the nation that finds the "heroes" underfoot, especially if they still think in religious terms and involve the population in their bloody ascent to an uninhabited paradise.