I don't think in terms of optimism and pessimism when writing a story. I am telling a story.

What is a hero without love for mankind.

After a certain age - and for some of us that can be very young - there are no new people, beasts, dreams, faces, events: it has all happened before.

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

A woman writer, quitting love before literature when love lets her down, will put literature before love.

Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to examine our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.