Being a mother is the best thing that ever happened to me. Before you have your first baby you are a girl and then you become a mother. There is no transition into being a woman you literally become a mum and being a mum means you always love someone else more than yourself and it is an unexplainable situation.

You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.

I lead no party I follow no leader. I have given the best part of my life to careful study of Islam its law and polity its culture its history and its literature.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning truth beauty.

When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences.

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off the belief it inspires is what counts.

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom the poetic passion the desire of beauty the love of art for its own sake has most.

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration or rather obliterates all consideration.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we're children but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they're scars of beauty or scars of ugliness it's pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

The phenomenon of home schooling is a wonderful example of the American can-do attitude. Growing numbers of parents have become disenchanted with government-run public schools. Many parents have simply taken matters into their own hands literally.

Films for TV have to be much closer to the book mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience after seeing this version to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never really be any form of art because it serves audience expectations.

Literature has drawn a funny perimeter that other art forms haven't.

More than art more than literature music is universally accessible.

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.