You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

It is quite easy to remark the absurdities and contradictions of a country's social system from outside its borders, but very difficult if one has been brought up in it.

Writers, and particularly female writers, have to fight for the conditions they need to work.

Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

The world is only tolerable because of the empty places in it...when the world's filled up, we'll have to get hold of a star. Any star. Venus, or Mars. Get hold of it and leave it empty. Man needs an empty space somewhere for his spirit to rest in.