If an idea seems to find its way towards a stage setting, that's the direction I take. I don't know if I'm trying to achieve anything other than to follow an idea on to the page.

It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now.' The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That's really what writing is—an intense form of thought.

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

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species.

Being called a 'bad citizen' is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That's exactly what we ought to do.

A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition.