“That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing – which is never an easy thing to do.”

Many writers tend to write summing-up books at the end of their lives.

All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.

Small things start us in new ways of thinking.

If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men.

If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don’t express your disregard for the essence of the culture. It’s a form of aggression.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Life doesn’t have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.

One must always try to see the truth of a situation – it makes things universal.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That’s where the mischief starts. That’s where everything starts unravelling.

In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.

Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter’.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over.

People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.

I thought about how easily we are all brainwashed by our society and culture to stop thinking and just assume by default that more money equals more success and more happiness, when ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life.

I saw for the first time the earth’s shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. The feelings which filled me I can express with one word-joy.

We forget very easily what gives us pain.

Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.

The secret of the team’s success is easy – unity and hard work.

How empowering it is to easily cut toxic connections.

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.

I love to be casual and comfortable, but I also love the easy glamour of wearing jewelry all the time.