Belgium is a country with a split personality.

I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

I never know exactly where I'm going with a story, whether it's a short story or a novel. If I did I'd soon grow bored of it. The fun, for me, is in the finding out and the making sense of it.

The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.

I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.

I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

There has been corruption in the Belgian civil service and at government level for decades. The Royal family do what they can to hold things together, and they don't do a bad job.

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter.

I am interested in power and in the idea of one country exerting power over another. The Soviets took this to an extreme.

The Belgians tend to downplay the cultural divide issue, and the far-right issue, but there's a staggering degree of casual racism in Belgium, much worse than in the UK.

No, really, " I said. "Now that we know that Flores is really this nasty, fiery, superpowerful nothing-can-kill-me demon from hell, maybe we should consider just giving Christy to him?

Every song deserves lyrics. Deserves a story to tell.

Space creates shape

Friendship of itself a holy tie is made more sacred by adversity.

When your enemy's making mistakes, don't interrupt him.

In convent, I live for 4 months in a broom closet. I do not rot.

Your destiny is my destiny. Your happiness is my happiness.

I feel about John's gospel like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her.

Don't regret what's happened. If it's in the past, LET IT GO. Don't even remember it!

And she's fair I love.