These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick.

Writing of history is our only heuristic principle. The Germans have a word for it, einfühlen. It is the ability to experience the past in the present and to recreate it. In my books, I have tried to recreate it in the most natural way possible: History must be integrated into the story without the weight of premonition.

A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?

I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.

I don't deny or affirm anything. I'm not very personal.

I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction.

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.