That vision of a common culture is now simply a remote wistfulness.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

Some of the words and symbols and images from childhood will continually be part and parcel of my personality.

A bad act done will fester and create in its own way. It's not only goodness that creates. Bad things create. They have their own yeast.

The loss of Eden is personally experienced by every one of us as we leave the wonder and magic and also the pains and terrors of childhood.

There's no end to the inventiveness of critics, I tell you. Because they can't write fiction, they put their impulse into their analysis of work.

People endure what they endure and they deal with it. It may corrupt them. It may lead them into all sorts of compensatory excesses.