At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age.

I think most people dont like others who, without a voice of their own, emulate the other. I certainly dont want anybody just to pick up my thoughts and hand them back to me.

A lawyer I once knew told me of a strange case, a suffragette who had never married. After her death, he opened her trunk and discovered 50 wedding gowns.

I never thought of myself as either a woman or a man. I thought of myself as a person who was born to a writer, who was doomed to be a writer.

All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.

I never fantasized or invented a thing, not one thing. I knew every single thing I ever wrote about.

If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.