I think a day in your life on which nothing bad happens may be a wonderful day, but it probably isn't going to be the basis of a story.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

Whoever would write books? It's suffering as well as greatly satisfying. And certainly there's suffering in the sense that you don't know for a long time how to do it.

We still have so many cultures in which people are imprisoned and whipped and killed for writing what they think.

In many cultures, women are sometimes literally kept from learning to read or from going to school.

There's the belief that we can't be smart enough to write. And certainly censorship of women, too.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

I heard a white writer say, 'Oh, I'd never put black people in my writing, I'm afraid I would offend someone by doing it wrong.' I can't bear that!

There is a lot of censorship about writing that's exerted from all directions, from families or governments and society, even the fear of being offensive in some way.

Little children are all writers.

I love it when people can help me with my work, so I do show it.

The Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ is my Shepherd.

I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

God invented concubinage, satan marriage.

One of the persistent ironies of reform is the impossibility of predicting the full consequences of change.

There are two types of computer languages; those that people hate and those that nobody uses.

I am a monopolar depressive descended from monopolar depressives. That's how come I write so good.

Refuse any image that could have a rational meaning or any memory or culture

The absence of Saddam is a huge weight off the Arab world.

I respond very well to well-written material and women who have had an effect on society, something tragic or monumental has happened to them.

The more distressing the memory, the more persistent it's presence.