We read because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them,in their problems.And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves...
The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.
I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.
A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.
Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.