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I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

I don't think most books can be justifiably translated on screen. The film versions can't convey the right emotion, fuel your imagination or allow you to visualise every line the way books do.

A book becomes something else once it's dramatized.

Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write.

The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.

I don't understand it when people get cross about how one of their works was adapted and say, 'Oh, they ruined it!' Well, the book is still there.

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.

What's upsetting about an autobiography is that the final chapter is always missing. I mean, you want the death, don't you?