As a person, I'm polite - I want to please.

As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.

I have a longing for fiction - to try to believe in it and to disappear into it.

For me, personally, it is very important that the days are exactly the same, so I have routines. I do the same thing every day.

Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.

The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.

I think that the best literature has a core that you can't lock to a time or place but that can generate lots of meanings and translations.

Shame tells you when you've gone too far. Then you try if it's okay to go too far. And it might be so that shame was right. You can never, never know that.

If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.

Any civilization where the main symbol of religious veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children.

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

advertising produces familiarity which produces sales

First, accept sadness. Realize that without losing, winning isn't so great

To be honest, I want readers to be wrung out. As a novelist, I don't have a political agenda or specific philosophy; I'm trying to create a gut-wrenching, intimate, memorable experience.

I'm suggesting that criminalizing chemically fertilized grass in favor of unnaturally-fed corn is not a rational trade off.

Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's ageless if you're interested in relationships and the way people can or can't relate to each other.

Being No. 1. It's talked about all of the time in hip-hop. 'I'm still No. 1! I'm the best! I'm the greatest of all time!' It's the same mentality in sports.

Lawyers and physicians are an ill provision for any country.

Zidane is the master. Over the past 10 years, there's been no-one like him, he has been the best player in the world.