It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.

I love Canada. It's a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.

Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense.

May books spread the world over!

I like using animals because they help suspend my reader's disbelief. We have certain ideas about dentists. We don't have many ideas about rhinoceros dentists.

Books are something social - a writer speaking to a reader - so I think making the reading of a book the center of a social event, the meeting of a book club, is a brilliant idea.