"In writing literary fiction, you are trying to help yourself. And readers are going to literary fiction not just to be entertained, but because they feel something else will happen; that the experience will take them beyond themselves and show them something they haven't seen before."

"Love places someone else in the centre of your being and your own self is blurred."

"Like many kids, I used to pretend all sorts of things. I would climb into a tree and imagine that I was on an island, that the grass below we was an ocean, that the leaves were the fins of sharks. Perhaps unlike many people, I never really stopped. I still have a childlike predisposition to fantasise and share my fantasies."

"I think the most effective forms of critique are ones that establish a common ground for people to occupy, and then appeal to the best nature of people on that common ground."

"Wisdom is the quiet art of recognizing what can be changed and releasing what cannot. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"I was one of those dark, quiet kids that wrote poetry."

"You can only end a negotiation for peace if you begin it."

"We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves."