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

Belgium is a country with a split personality.

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.

You can never know where I am or what I am, But I am good company to you nonetheless, And really do regret I broke your ink

Your past success is link into what the future holds for you.

The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice.

Those that have so much power over others as to be able to oppress them have seldom so much over themselves as not to oppress.

Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world.

It is a foolish prince who entrusts the safety of his lands to hired men.

If it were not for quotations, conversations between gentlemen would consist of an endless series of 'what-ho!'s.

As an anarchist, I cannot reconcile myself to any government.

Unless we have courage to recognize cruelty for what it is - whether its victim is human or animal - we cannot expect things to be much better in the world.

Self-managing is Job One. Have a vision and a mission. Surround yourself with talented people. Rely on effective coaching, not managing of employees.