“My books must be an absolute nightmare to translate. I wouldn't do it. I had a couple of them in Japanese some years ago and my wife met a Japanese woman who said that she had read the books. And she asked her what the translations were like. This woman said they were the worst translation she had ever read in her life. She said she didn't recognise the books when she finally read them in English.”

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”

“When Roseanne read the first script of mine that got into her hands without being edited by someone else she said, 'How can you write a middle-aged woman this well?' I said, 'If you met my mom you wouldn't ask'.”

“… she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”

“She had her addictions and one of them was reading.”

“Life Plan:
I asked her what she planned to do with her life & she said she was way beyond that point already. I'm just happy I remember to be there when it happens, she said.”

“Take no heed of her…. She reads a lot of books.”

“Earlier this year we went skiing and I was in a shop, paying a bill and there was a woman standing there whom I knew slightly. I was waiting for my bill and she was buying something, a tea strainer. Quite suddenly she said to me, 'Where was your Father killed?'. I was very surprised and blurted out 'Oh Anzio'. Now this is a woman of about my age, so she's 40-ish. She said, 'My Father was killed in the war'. Apparently somebody lent her a copy of 'The Final Cut' and she had listened to the whole thing and she had found it very moving. In fact she said it had moved her to tears. She told me this, standing in the shop, with some effort I suspect, and I remember thinking: That's enough really. It doesn't matter if the Americans don't buy it.”

“She said she thought there were different ways of loving someone, and there were some she used to think were the most important, and now she had changed her mind.”

“She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”