Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

In London, the weather would affect me negatively. I react strongly to light. If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul.

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.

I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.