That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

I was no good at being a child.

I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.