I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

I never wanted to change the world. Norman Mailer wanted to, he set himself the task of changing the consciousness of our age. And I think he came pretty close, in the 1960s, to actually managing to do it. But me? No, no, I never wanted anything like that. I'm not Maileresque.

People will not die. Isn't this the creed of the new culture? People will be absorbed in streams of information. I know nothing about this. Computers will die. They're dying in their present form. They're just about dead as distinct units.

I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

One of my earliest memories as a reader - I don't know how old I was, quite young - was a poem of his, called "Fog," and I remember the first verse, "The fog comes / on little cat feet".

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

Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail.