If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

A building that has great environmental responsibility is a political animal in a way because it becomes promotional of a cause. I think that kind of advocacy through architecture is really good.

I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes, and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it.

Give space to life. Give time to sprout your potential - the potential to awaken the beauty in you. Awaken the beauty of your heart - the beauty of your spirit. There are infinite possibilities.

It's a Crime for the Slave to Love her Bonds.

Time has passed through me and become a song.

I loved the idea that I could write a joke and someone else would have to take the risk of performing it.

David will never go to space again. I'm glad.What did it gain the McQuarries? What has it ever gained men? Have men ever brought back more happiness from the stars? Will they ever?

You can be for something and still be damaged by it.

I want to get off with the screenwriting.

there is no path to peace, but peace itself is the path.