In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he'll become.

Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is 'I know this feeling. I was here before'.

In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are.

Coming and going I am leaving. I will go and come. Leaving has come to me. We all, shall all, will all be left. Because I am here and where. And I will go or not or never. And I have seen what I will see. If I am where I will be. Because nothing comes between me.

I've never made an outline for any novel that I've written. Never.