I think we really forget how connected we are to the past.

I tell my students that being a writer is like being a member of a medieval guild and that what we are doing is very subversive and very important.

I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.

I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.

Peace begins with a smile.

The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.

I can hardly find the words to describe the peace I felt when I was acting. My dysfunctional self could actually plug in to another self, not my own, and it felt so good. It was the first time that I existed inside a fully-functioning self - one that I controlled, that I steered, that I gave life to.

I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters.