Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.

When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.

The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

Taking on challenging projects is the way that one grows and extends one's range as a writer, one's technical command, so I consider the time well-spent

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Happiness should never be your ultimate goal as you can experience it everyday, it’s a matter of choice

Nothing gives me as much pleasure as travelling. I love getting on trains and boats and planes.

The rapid rise of the People's Republic of China as a military and economic power is challenging the status quo.

The future is uncertain... but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity.

Can a country's people be better than its planes?

The greatest crime of welfare isn't that it's a waste of money, but that it's a waste of people.

Everybody in America is so money-hungry. It's like a rat race and even when you win you're still a freaking rat.

Do you even know who the enemy is?" "I think... it's me".

Oh, the weather outside is weather.

The Vatican has always had a core of diplomats for centuries. It has ambassadors in 180 countries and always played a kind of behind-the-scene role in many world issues.