In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.

The best fiction stays with you and changes you.

My grandfather and I were very close.

A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

Come on, is your heart a sponge or a fist?

We're all entitled to our superstitions.

My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone we're left with the concept, but not the true memory.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

Push my buttons, and I'll push you off a bridge.

I have the most conservative position.

We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.

The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.

There's nothing undignified about lying about all day and being waited on by servants, sipping bloody champagne.

Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form

Americans are all inquisitive, which accounts for their go-aheadativeness, I dare say.

I don't think there is such a thing as the perfect system.

We're not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds. We're protecting it for our own sake.

The man who is successful is the man who is useful.