It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses.

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire.

When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept - the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.

Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.

How can the planet keep turning and turning and not get so bored it explodes?

I never made a decision in my life that wasn't one hundred per cent selfish.