Writer

I think I have grown impatient with just being a writer.

I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the food and were horrified. Whereas, my view was that if it was vaguely edible, then it's fine.

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

Siapa pun yang tidak malu tentang masa lalunya mungkin mereka tidak cukup belajar.

Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are able to make something a little more coherent by the end of the day.

There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If you go with excitement, you create chaos; you hurt people. There's jealousy, and it gets very messy. If you have security, it can be boring, and you die inside because of all the opportunities missed.

We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to respond to certain quite specific pains and dilemmas of our psyches.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

The problem with airports is that we go there when we need to catch a plane - and because it's so difficult to find the way to the gate, we tend not to look around at our surroundings.

We don't sulk with everybody. We limit our sulks to a very particular person: the person who's supposed to love us and understand us. And we make this equation that if you love me, you're supposed to understand me even if I don't explain what's wrong.

Saya merasa bahwa tantangan besar waktu kita adalah komunikasi dari ide.

Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

Small issues are really just large ones that haven't been accorded the requisite attention.

To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone.

The person who is truly best suited to us is not the person who shares our tastes, but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently and wisely.

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

The modern world thinks of art as very important: something close to the meaning of life.

Konflik Arab-Israel juga dalam banyak hal merupakan konflik tentang status: itu adalah perang antara dua orang yang merasa sangat terhina oleh yang lain, yang ingin yang lain menghormati mereka. Perebutan status bisa lebih sulit daripada pertempuran di darat atau air atau minyak.

I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come to loathe them back, as it seems only polite to do so. But at heart it's absurd; we should band together against the big common enemies.