We are all good friends. Friendship is what endures. Shared ideals, respect for the whole character of a human being.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

A book begins as a private excitement of the mind.

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

Because like all whores you value propriety. You are creature of capitalism, the ethics of which are so totally corrupt and hypocritical that your beauty is no more than the beauty of gold, which is to say false and cold and useless.

We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.