I am less interested in ghosts than in people who see ghosts.

I've been a professional writer for 20 years, and there are contours in that time, crescents and troughs.

Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.

No one needs a first edition. Whoever wrote it; even if it was Moses.

The modern superstition is that we're free of superstition.

Why can’t our job here on earth be simply to inspire each other?

George Orwells 1984 frequently tops surveys of our greatest books: its not a celebration of poetic language. Its decidedly anti-literary, a masterpiece of personal and political narrative sequence. And its subject matter is crucial, because what 1984 shows is that language can be a dirty trick.