As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.

I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.

The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.

For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us.

A novel is a machine for generating interpretations.