The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.

The problem with the Internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate?

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.