On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfamiliar trees into which East Pakistani refugees had fled, seeking safety over the Indian border.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

Seldom or perhaps never does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises there is no coming to consciousness without pain.

See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.

I'd like to work with any actress from whom I can learn-one who has had many experiences with many directors and is willing to share some of her knowledge with me.

I mean Filth is the best British film since Trainspotting. It might even be better. I keep watching it back to back with Trainspotting to try and work out which is the best. I can't split them.

If somebody says they don't watch the leaderboard, I don't buy that, I'm sorry. Because you've got to know where you are to know how to play.

Young children give us glimpses of some things that are eternal.

I don't have storyboards, but I have some very strict rules, like not moving the camera.

The scent of flowers does not travel against the wind; but the odor of good people travels; even against the wind: a good man pervades every place.

Some traders still think that a computer could not trade as well as they can.