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

If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead.

You need someone to see what you’ve done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what’s gone into it.

The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.

I still think it’s really quite wonderful when I read a sentence of mine and it has that quality of lastingness.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

The Europeans wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves.

The ancillary aspect of every British city now is the council estate.

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

It is important not to trust people too much.

Writing has to support itself.

I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There’s no right.

All cultures have been mingled forever.

In England people are very proud of being very stupid.

Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can’t do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.

In reality, karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment.

There is no glory in punishing.

Don’t punish yourself by staying with people who hurt you. When they start destroying your peace instead of protecting it, it’s time to let go of them.

It is the certainty of being punished and not the horrifying spectacle of public punishment that must discourage crime.

Madness is the false punishment of a false solution, but by its own virtue, it brings to light the real problem, which can then be truly resolved.

Getting smart on crime’ does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

Change doesn’t come through punishment or shame but it comes through acceptance & belief.

The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.