It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.

I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.

You can only give things up once they start to let you down.

I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.