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.

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.

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

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

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

Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go.

When you stand next to beauty and know you’re not, you either feel inferior or you’re thankful for the ones who saw you and loved you anyway.

Now is the time to change your tomorrow.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom.

Public opinion, though slow as lava, in the end forces governments towards more sanity, more justice. My heroes and heroines are all private citizens.

To say a prayer is not enough. One has to believe that it's possible for that prayer to be heard.

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness.

What is marriage but the renunciation of unchastity? The savage does not marry. Man marries because he renounces.

There is no perfect knowledge which can be entitled ours, that is innate; none but what has been obtained from experience, or derived in some way from our senses.