I was trying not to be happy, hopeful. I did not believe I deserved happiness or even hope, if you knew my soul.

And what is 'art'? - a firestorm rushing through Time, arising from no visible source and conforming to no principles of logic or causality.

Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling.

I am not conscious of working especially hard, or of 'working' at all. Writing and teaching have always been, for me, so richly rewarding that I don't think of them as work in the usual sense of the word.

My first love was reading, which inspired me to write.