If you are going to stick to the truth then you need to keep your distance from the Chinese government and indeed to any form of politics, including the politics of democratic countries.

To me the truth comes first and then the literature. We in China are dealing with a dictatorial system and we writers have to take a stance on it.

A good novelist loves all of his characters, he lives in them, even in those who commit or must commit terrible acts.

We are the estranged orphans of our nations and tribes, and we now bear the weight not of survival of the group but of personal identity.

Thought is born of failure.

Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.

I think it's safe to say that 50% of the record buying metal community is people between the ages of 16 and 25 - people still in their teenage-angsty, early young-adult years.

When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky?

Oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?

There is a power in the human mind ... to see things as they are ... but there is equally a power to see things as they might be.

I like definitive things.

When the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first.

Naruto: I bet you're dying to know my name! Gaara: I couldn't care less.