biography cannot be separated from autobiography: that is, the life written about is inextricably entangled with the life of the biographer.

Much more than a 20th-century village storyteller, Cees Nooteboom stands as an impressive and inimitable voice among contemporary writers.

The pain of an unpublished manuscript is akin to the trauma of bearing an unborn.

Books are like horcruxes--without all the evil--because a piece of the author goes into each one.

Every great robbery that was ever perpetrated upon a people has been by virtue of an in-the-name-of law.

You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you.

Just because I’m cheeky, doesn’t mean I’m not serious

There are some things that require no work, and healing is one of them.

I think the path for a young writer might be one that says, "I have to accept myself, this is what I am. I can't eradicate my defects. I can work on them."

Little kids shoot marbles where the branches break the sun into graceful shafts of light… I just want to be pure.

Religion belongs to the realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore closed to science.