Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention.

A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.

The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.

There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.