In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

You have the feeling that if you get a Pulitzer, you're somehow set for life.

I write on a very strict 2-hour-a-day schedule, and I really respond to structure and invented rules. So even if I'm finding out good information on a character, I will stop when I'm set to stop.

English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an...

To be a Jew is a destiny.

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

Usually on Sundays, I won't cook because I'll have dinner at my mom's. She's the provost of Mills College in Oakland and lives on campus. It's a very beautiful school in a very bad part of town.

Being a fiction writer makes you someone who works with irresponsibility.

People talk about this 'bucket list': 'I need to go to this country, I need to skydive.' Whereas I need to think as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to be conscious and observe and understand...

In all my novels, I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.

Novels are nothing but evolution, but there does come a point when that stops, and the story is sealed within the pages of the book. That doesn't happen with a play. Even performances are different...

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

I'll keep going till my face falls off.

The Koran was revealed at a time of great change in the Arab world, the seventh-century shift from a matriarchal nomadic culture to an urban patriarchal system.

Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of the earth and the life upon it, that I cannot think of heaven and the angels.

People have entire relationships via text message now, but I am not partial to texting. I need context, nuance and the warmth and tone that can only come from a human voice.

When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - until one day you know you...

Writing about carrying the past on your back is a manifestation of my Irishness, because we go on and on and will for another two or three generations.

I grew up in a lot of different homes when I was younger: my parents rented trailers and small, boxy houses set high on cement block pillars.

I spend a lot of time in L.A., and when it rains there you get the entire rainfall for the year in two days, raindrops the size of mangoes. And in Barcelona, the Mediterranean storms come up from the...

A modest man is usually admired, if people ever hear of him.

A young man is a theory, an old man is a fact.

The more accurately one can illuminate a particular human experience, the better the work of art.

I was raised in Mississippi, in a family and a community that identified as black, and I have the stories and the experiences to go with it. One of my great-great grandfathers was killed by a gang of...

I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.

I have forgotten my rave reviews and memorized my vicious ones - like most writers.

The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past - I felt I was digging a tunnel back to...

I am the first to point out that I really am not kind to illustrators. By that, I mean I really don't give that much to work with.

Some people think that all the equipment you need to discuss religion is a mouth.

I'll continue on the path I've been taking, feet on the ground, describing people's lives, describing people's emotions, writing from the standpoint of the ordinary people.