“Far from being writers—founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language, diggers of wells and builders of houses—readers are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves.”

“And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark.”

“If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody.Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”

“I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.”

“I knew, as every peasant does, that land can never be truly owned. We are the keepers of the soil, the curators of trees.”

“There is only laughing across the land as the car moves you along, on your way someplace with love in the car.”