I think it is an important question of our lives - what is the meaning of literature to us as humans.

Those are the two things: a sense of loving and being loved, and being creative - that is what life is made up of, and what literature reminds us of.

Wonder - the sensation of being whisked out of time and space...to be bathed in ... epiphanous delight.

It is terribly important to maintain a national identity in a way that it probably wasn't before.

You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

A form of art that I like is portraiture. I've been thinking about portraiture, and its relationship to writing and literature, biography and autobiography, and so that will be my next thing.

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays.

Every time you watch a performance in the theatre, you know that this is just for you, and will never be the same again. It is quite exciting for me.

The Odyssey and Iliad say things about the human condition in ways we should re-acquaint ourselves with, and use as a prism to interpret though.

In the theatre, you are in love with what is on the stage, with the moment. You just don't get that with movies or videos, or TV, where you know that what you are seeing is repeatable.

One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something.

When it looks like everyone is against you, look inside for the truth.

I was totally dominated and revered my father. I admired everything he did. He was a great sports person. He loved me. I was his only boy at that time, before my brother Billy came along.

When I lived in New York, not only did I have safety locks on the door but I had the music going, keeping the city at a distance, trying to find creative time and peace and so forth.

If the watchdog doesn't bark, how do you know there's a burglar in the basement? And the press is supposed to be a watchdog.

Raoden looked up at his friend. "We're not dead, Galladon, and we're not damned. We're just unfinished.

In terms of fashion, I think the biggest influence that I had was my father. My pops, he was really into men's fashion and read all of the magazines.

Maybe its a generational thing, but I never wanted to be the best black dancer in the world. I just wanted to be the best.

Even to me, as I was trying to tell the government what had happened, it just didn't seem to matter.

All good conversation, manners, and action come from a spontaneity which forgets usages and makes the moment great.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.