“I didn’t become a writer to write about me.”

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.

We all owe death a life.

What I do think is evident is that those countries in the world where Islamic extremism has recovered the most power, those are also the countries which are most disliked.

Religion is responsible for a lot of the problems in the history of the world and it’s not something that I practice or recommend, but to each his own.

But there’s one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn’t one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.

My horizon’s have shrunk and I have only endings to write.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.

Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.

I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.

Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.

I’ve spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.

I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.

The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you’ve struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.

I type in one place, but I write all over the house.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.