“Love is a dangerous thing. It comes in disguise to change our life… Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted.”

The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.

You’ll call me damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children. How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold… doesn’t bear thinking about, but I suppose we’d have made it work somehow.

We don’t build,’ I said to my son, ‘we just destroy.

You won’t regret the men you never killed, but you will regret the women you passed up.

What I mean by that is that the point of life, as I see it, is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans, but to achieve happiness, and preferably an unselfish happiness.

So far it’s 43 books in 25 years.

Wyrd bith ful araed (Fate is inexorable).

Research is a lifelong occupation so it’s hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.

I’ll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.

Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.

Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don’t take chances then you’ll never have a winning hand, and I’ve no regrets.

Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you’re writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.

We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.

Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.

Life is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh… or else you’ll weep yourself to death.

Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted

All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That’s all I ever wanted.

I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?

I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. I read. I painted. I thought.

What I want from my lovers is real, unadulterated love, and from my genuine workers I expect real work done.

Those who constantly want something will never feel happy.

They wanted to buy out my contract, but I couldn’t make change for a $20, so they had to let me stay.

I wanted the world to know that my country Ethiopia has always won with determination and heroism.