What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible.

I am sure everyone has had the experience of reading a book and finding it vibrating with aliveness, with colour and immediacy. And then, perhaps some weeks later, reading it again and finding it flat and empty. Well, the book hasn't changed: you have.

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

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

The art of living in a small town is one of the most difficult to acquire.

When the print revolution occurred 400 years ago, human beings lost a certain mental capacity, including a sense of memory. In Africa today, you meet people who still carry everything in their heads, the way we used to. We rely on telephone books, address books. We have to look up everything.