We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".