So why not become a mongrel? It's healthy.

I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journal….

I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?.

The English landscape at its finest - such as I saw this morning - possesses a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficial….

People were incredibly kind to our family and went out of their way to help..

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries..

Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not suc….

The reason I wouldn't dare to write a Western is simply because that seems to be so much a part of American culture. Maybe if I want to write a Weste….

When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence aroun….

What interests me is the surprising enormous extent to which most people accept the fate that's been given to them, and find some dignity..

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of..

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki..

I still have a suspicion of charity and think the state has a role to play in many areas. And although for most of the years since I have been a rath….

When I was younger, I didn't read that much. I was more interested in film and music. Now I'm curious. I want to know what it's all about..

I think jogging is bad for your health. All that pressure on the knees and back cannot be good for you..

To see the best before I have properly begun would be somewhat premature..

The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are….

If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture..

What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint..

When I got to 40 or so... I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought abou….

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened..