If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.

Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.

I despise this weakness in myself - this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action.

...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.

I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.

Just because we think of wolves (or the wilderness, or another race) as wild and fierce, doesn't mean there isn't another side to them.

I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.

I don't use real people for inspiration.

I suppose the short chapters and differing narrative points of view are quite "cinematic" devices, which came very naturally to me.

Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.

Gypsies are, to say the least, underrepresented in literature and film.

why are trying so hard to fit in, when you're born to stand out

Keep one goal only and that is ‘to know thy Self [Soul]’. Do not be insistent about ‘I want to do this and do that’. Whatever happens, at whatever time, is correct.

Everything that is truly of value–love, family, peace, health, and contentment—can never be bought.

My idea of an acceptable person is someone that is ready to accept my ideas.

Institutions are imperfect. Governments surely are. People are.

My mother has all my awards, because if I walked downstairs every day and saw all my achievements it would be so easy to become complacent.

When we were engaged in the problems of survival we had no time to have anything to do with culture.

I think sometimes negative campaigning, like so much, is in the eye of the beholder, and I don't think we'll ever get rid of it.

More dreams are destroyed in bed than are ever found there.

After Richmond, we went to Dover and tested that week at Kentucky. I was going to Dover and we had to get the trainer to meet us at the airport. I had to do some therapy on my ribs they hurt so bad.