Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.

As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.

I'm always nervous about going home, just as I am nervous about rereading books that have meant a lot to me.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear.

Going back after a long time will make you made, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.

I had been taught to look for monsters and devils and I found ordinary people.