My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.

Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don't think I'm writing about abnormal things. ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception.

It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.

The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.

I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.

There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.