Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me.

What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint.

I felt slightly superior to student politics, for instance. I had no reason to think this, but I thought of myself as slightly more seasoned. I became quite cynical talking to my student friends.

I quizzed him a lot on this point and i suspect the truth was that it was like a lot of things at that age: you don't have any clear reason, you just do it. You do it because you think it might get a laugh, or because you want to see if it'll cause a stir. And when you're asked to explain afterwards, it doesn't seem to make any sense.