People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.

You know what's funny? I don't ever feel the need to escape. I have a strong marriage. I like my life. You hear about these guys having midlife crises - I don't see that happening to me.

Everything is funny as long as it's happening to somebody else.

That freedom can never be attained by a nation without suffering and sacrifice has been amply borne out by the recent tragic happenings in this subcontinent.

But having said that what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

There is no city or country in the world where women and girls live free of the fear of violence. No leader can claim: 'this is not happening in my backyard.'

I was kind of surprised to learn how controlling I am. I never thought of myself in that way. I think the root of the control issues is usually fear because you want to know what's going to be happening at any given moment.

I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.

You have no idea how humiliating it was as a boy to suddenly have all your clothes your toys snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed I felt dirty.

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.