What do young girls dream of? Of the knife and of blood.

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: 'You see,' he says, 'now that’s formalism.

What do young girls dream of? Of the knife and of blood.

Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention.

The art of the novel, however, has fallen into such a state of stagnation - a lassitude acknowledged and discussed by the whole of critical opinion - that it is hard to imagine such an art can survive for long without some radical change. To many, the solution seems simple enough: such a change being impossible, the art of the novel is dying.