Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing.

It doesn't have to be like that but mostly it is.

After every ''victory'' you have more enemies.

Each book is a different staging post on the writer's journey, and each book stands by itself, regardless of the writer's relationship to it.

We are lucky, even the worst of us, for daylight comes.

I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.