The followers must feel besieged.

I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writing a book. You have to capture the attention, the complicity of your audience.

I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.

Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country

We like lists because we don't want to die.

Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.

My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.