The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

It is far easier to write an angry letter than to go and say angry things to another person - because as soon as we look in one another's faces we can see the other point of view.

If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider. If I was offered anything like the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd find it an extremely difficult conflict because I'd be basically disinclined to accept.

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.