It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.

People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged.

I have to admit that I only read War and Peace when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.

The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

Authors frequently say things they are unaware of; only after they have gotten the reactions of their readers do they discover what they have said

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the other, that the writer has followed a recipe, a kind of secret set of rules that they would like to see revealed. There is no set of rules, or, rather, there are many, varied and flexible rules.