The English public always feels perfectly at ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.
All human stories are migration stories because everyone is a refugee from their own childhood.
Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family.
I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.
I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.
I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.
Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they'd die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren't big enough to love more than one person like that.
Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.
You check into the hotel and see you're booked for seven nights. But you know you might be leaving in a day or two. It's exciting for the fans. But you're on edge. And you're on edge the whole round.
All the rare and royal names Wormy sheepskin yet retains
Cuba is a wonderful country. What Castro’s done is superb.