There are many feminists who work in the media, and they think that feminism is very important. It is in their own lives, but mostly feminism has had an impact among privileged women in the advanced Western countries. For the most part, it hasn't begun to touch the lives of poor and working women in the Third World, and that distresses me.

What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness.

Artists are the traditional interpreters of dreams and nightmares.

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

I'm sure that everybody feels a kind of permanent anguish about what's going on in the world.

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

Nicknames are potent ways of cutting people down to size.