Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer - such as it is - is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

I break up through the skin of awareness a thousand times a day, as dolphins burst through seas, and dive again, and rise, and dive.

I had good innings, as the British say. I wrote for 38 years at the top of my form, and I wanted to quit on a high note.