When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away.

A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Finish the day's writing when you still want to continue.

The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all.

It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.

Our people... blood is the only language we speak. I'm all out of words.

I love how intimate I've become with failure.

Your guess is as good as mine.

Nothing binds me to my Lord like a strong belief in His changeless love.

When you have the enthusiasm and the passion, you end up figuring how to excel.

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

To get GoPro started, I moved back in with my parents and went to work seven days a week, 20 hours a day. I wrote off my personal life to make headway on it.

We have to continue to grow within and outwardly. We have to keep going.

Dare, will, keep silence.

In chess, you should be as cool as a cucumber.