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

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 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.

Arise in mighty strength and pursue your dream.

I can't fathom my love for you, but I know that it makes me want to drown inside of you.

He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.

I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice - in giving a failure another chance.

Faith is not contrary to reason.

Because of the way the business is structured, I have sometimes turned down scripts that I might otherwise have accepted had I known who was directing them.

I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.

The day I worry about cleaning my house is the day Sears comes out with a riding vacuum cleaner.

If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family.

Actors are programmed to see the worst. If you're talking about an actor's TV series, you say, "I loved you last night." And they go, "What about the week before?" They immediately worry.