I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.

After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.

Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishounorable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.

Love means having something to betray.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

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

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.