I think the French have a romantic cliche that Englishmen have great style, great music, irony and sense of humour. Well, sometimes cliches are true.

You can really only enjoy life when youre extremely busy.

Jeanne Moreau, Lauren Bacall, they had this unconventional beauty, this amazing charisma.

I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos.

I like to look like a tomboy during the day and then a pin-up girl at night.

I'm not super-conservative, but a bit of tradition is nice.

I was a big fan of Ron Howard of course, so it was fantastic to meet him.

I love food, so exercise is important for me.

You can really only enjoy life when you're extremely busy.

My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...

Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.

I like to listen to music that fits with what I'm writing. For each book, I've assembled a playlist, so readers can get a sense of what I was listening to while I was writing.

There could be few men whose love for a woman had been written on his face with a knife.

My heart is a colored pencil but my brain is an eraser

The void in our society has been produced by the absence of values... we have no widespread belief in the value of participation. The rational system has made us fear standing out in any serious way.

The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.