I like that original romance of having a pen and a legal pad and going anywhere in the world and being able to write a novel with just those two things.

Language is the writer's only tool - we really don't have anything else - but our language contains within it our entire experience of the world.

We are surrounded by story.

A good writer sells out everybody he knows, sooner or later.

Guilt is glorious when it's well earned.

Heightism is the last unchecked prejudice.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

When I'm not writing, I can't make sense of out anything. I feel the need to make some sense and find some order, and writing fiction is the only way I've found that seems to begin to do that.

I'd like to be better at short, snappy answers.

Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.

We are at the mercy of time, and for all the ways we are remembered, a sea of things will be lost. But how much is contained in what lingers!

We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears - by listening to them.

I will continue to urge creditors to take the steps needed to put Greece on a path towards a durable economic recovery because it's in all of our interests that Greece succeeds.

I've known Al Gore since he was born. He has been the best little boy, he was a boring child, and he has never done anything wrong.

The writer Richard Curtis is a genius.

Every reformation must have its victims. You can’t expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal’s return.

In some ways, you can say that at any time in any writer's career: 'He might have run out of ideas.'

There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby.

I was very willing to take on controversial roles that people didn't really want to look at.

I think that film is still an artform and it doesn't really matter if you're using a digital camera or a film camera.