We like love - we love love - but perhaps its only meaning lies in its ubiquitous meaninglessness. We apprehend it, we feel it, and we think we know it, yet we cannot say what we mean by it.
Family matters, friends matter, love matters. Those you love and who love you matter. That's what writing does - it allows you to say all those things.
I think all novels are contemporary. When people went to see 'Antony-Cleopatra' at the Globe in the 16th century, they were not going to get a history lesson on the Roman Empire. It was about love, sex, and also about dynastic troubles.
If war illuminates love, love offers the possibility of allowing some light to be brought back out of the shadows. It's almost as if they buttress and make possible an understanding of each other.
War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue to life. And to deny hope in a story about such darkness is to create false art.
I love all forms of music. I even like music I dislike, because the music you dislike is like going to a strange country, and it forces you to rethink everything and to appreciate its particular joys.
I had long wanted to write a love story, and I had long - wisely, I felt - shirked the challenge because I felt it the hardest story of all to write.
Of all the love stories ever published, I have - realistically - read very few.
What is missed when people talk about books is the moment of grace when the reader creates the book, lends it the authority of their life and soul. The books I love are me, have become me.
Love is the scent of a sleeping back, death a slight draft of bad breath.
Love is a glimpse of hope. To love is to hope. When we abandon hope, we cease to exist.
I am the happiest writing and being with the people I love.
Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.
I love words because you can only live one life, but in a novel, you can live a thousand: you contain multitudes.