Reading was such an enrichment of my life. And it was that pleasure that I had as a very young reader probably that is the origin of my vocation.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)

The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.

What's wrong with people?" she says, almost too quiet for me to hear. "Were they born with parts missing or did it fall out somewhere along the way?

Leaders should know how fast time runs and how faster they can beat it. Poor leaders run slowly till time overtakes them.

All my life I'd been a believing Christian. ... But that instant in the ER--the instant Annette [his wife] died--I seemed to feel my religious faith die

What is it that you contain? The dead, time, light patterns of millenia opening in your gut. What is salted up in the memory of you? Memory past and memory future.

The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figure-the figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.

Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call global challenges, which require global solidarity.

I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election.

I do not know what I thought Paris would be like, but it was not that way. It rained nearly every day.

Man is sent into the world to perform his duty even at the cost of his life.

My religion is to be alive from LOVE.