Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out.

Why is the measure of love loss?

Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

Six books… my mother didn’t want books falling into my hands. It never occurred to her that I fell into the books – that I put myself inside them for safe keeping.

Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won't help you.

Where you are born--what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own-- stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalisation have to say.

Memory loss is one way of coping with damage.

To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.

We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way.

What we do makes a difference and what we think about influences what we do.

Very few USA citizens realize that the USA corporate military is regarded by many to be both a domestic and international terrorist organization.

Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world but you must get at a man through his own religion not through yours.

It is better to make a mistake than to do nothing.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

In a funny way, the stories keep themselves alive by emerging from one another. I like that.

Hockey is the only thing that I'm not good at that I love.

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

Nothing feels worse than having to break the stage down before the performance, and I mean nothing.

My father was champion of North Africa and he beat the European champ. He was very good, a professional for 12 years. We're from a big family of boxers. My father has seven brothers.