You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you.

I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.

Every country should have a strong literary tradition of its own at the center, but it should also have an interest in other countries.

All you decent, well-meaning gentlemen, let me ask you, have you any idea what sort of place the world is becoming all around you? The days when you could act out of your noble instincts are over. Except of course, you here in Europe don't yet seem to know it.

I grew up in Britain before it became a multicultural place, so in many ways I have a nostalgia for an England that's vanished - the England of my childhood has actually disappeared.

I don't think it's any fun, even if you are one of the most respected authors in the world like Margaret Atwood, to keep being nominated and not win.

One is not struck by the truth until prompted quite accidentally by some external event.