I think that physical actions are always hard to describe, to translate.

I always hesitate to say that something is lifelike.

The truth is, just to hear other people speaking Italian is really worth it. It keeps the sound in your ear.

It's one of the hardest things to translate anything that's not standard.

I have very strict rules in my head that seem to me to be the way things should sound.

One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not.

That's a huge subject - a writer refusing to do publicity but writing about publicity.

To have the translator be a figure in the book's presentation seems like a big thing, especially for a book that's really popular.

I tend to be kind of literal about translation. I think it's important to present the writer as closely as possible.

Social media: a fine tool for radicalised idiots to find each other, a promised land for the pub bores and Champ Man anoraks of the nation.

Life drew me and I followed it.

Without explaining why, and, most of all, without naming other authors or books, I can only say my novels are influenced by love and death.

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author's life.

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the life of those people.

I've been so fortunate in my life that my family has never been jealous of my success. They have shown true love and commitment to me by being supportive. They shared in it.

I was dead, then alive. Weeping, then laughing. The power of love came into me, and I became fierce like a lion, then tender like the evening star.

We live in a world of intolerance masked as tolerance.

There's always a lot happening. I mean, that's the thing about politics: it's just one damn thing after another!

Where cheating is, there's mischief there.