Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.
The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.
Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.
There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.
My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.
An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.