The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.

Belgium is a country with a split personality.

I'm not trying to write cinematic novels, but I have been told several times that my style is cinematic.

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

I never know exactly where I'm going with a story, whether it's a short story or a novel. If I did I'd soon grow bored of it. The fun, for me, is in the finding out and the making sense of it.

I have no patience with up-themselves authors who complain about having to trail round a few bookshops signing stock.

I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

There has been corruption in the Belgian civil service and at government level for decades. The Royal family do what they can to hold things together, and they don't do a bad job.

The short story feels like the most natural length for prose fiction, or certainly for the kind of ideas and situations I like to encounter.

I am interested in power and in the idea of one country exerting power over another. The Soviets took this to an extreme.

The Belgians tend to downplay the cultural divide issue, and the far-right issue, but there's a staggering degree of casual racism in Belgium, much worse than in the UK.

Life is a journey of astonishing beauty, and this is what makes life worth living.

Because the sun helps you in the day, do not scoff at stars at night.

Nobody can make you happy or unhappy except you.

He that did not know and did not know that he did not know will never know

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process.

Any friend of fossil is a friend of mine... We’ve got to do everything we can to get people out of their automobiles and into mass transit.

We pay for security with boredom, for adventure with bother.

As a rule, I think they are quite impossible. Geniuses talk so much, don't they? Such a bad habit! And they are always thinking about themselves, when I want them to be thinking about me.

Success is a nice thing because it always means you've taken a step forward and it gives you a sense of pride, which in turn gives you confidence and experience-a positive circle, so to speak.

I'm glad I was in the Navy.