A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth; we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.

You are here to be fully alive. Your expression is needed. Don't hold back

There is no communication with God without communication with God’s people

Start your journey where the road ends! Glory lies beyond the ends!

Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.

On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned.

Do not pollute your beautiful, radiant Being nor the Earth with negativity. Do not give unhappiness in any form whatsoever a dwelling place inside you.

Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.

I'm not into this memoir craze that's been going on for 20 years now and doesn't seem to ever let up. People just indiscriminately say "memoir" now when it's a person writing about their own life.

My job as the writer is to fool you. Your job as the reader is to see if you can catch me at it.

Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.