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.

There are two categories of writers, it could be said: The author who is just a voice, and the one who is also creating a picture. I belong to the latter, because I have an acute visual sense.

If you know you're worth nothing, only a gamble with death can gratify your vanity.

Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work.

Fame and secrecy are the high and low ends of the same fascination.

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there is a sense in which fiction can rescue history from confusion.

He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.