All art at a certain level is entertainment. We go to a tragedy by Sophocles to be entertained.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part.

The novel is resilient, and so are novelists.

Art is amoral, whether we accept this or not; it does not take sides. The finest fictions are cold at heart.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s devoted Beckett readers greeted each successively shorter volume from the master with a mixture of awe and apprehensiveness; it was like watching a great mathematician wielding an infinitesimal calculus, his equations approaching nearer and still nearer to the null point.

The effect of prizes on one's career - if that is what to call it - is considerable, since they give one more clout with publishers and more notoriety among journalists. The effect on one's writing, however, is nil - otherwise, one would be in deep trouble.