It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.

A real writer is always shifting and changing and searching.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.

The writer's only real task: to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art