I have to conclude that fiction is better at 'the truth' than a factual record.

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

An interim report - that is what an autobiography is.

What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.