There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

The Room I wrote in 1957, and I was really gratified to find that it stood up. I didn't have to change a word.

While The United States is the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, it is also the most detested nation that the world has ever known.

The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.

How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?