Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.

It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

Most things disappoint till you look deeper.

I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts.

God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love.