age means nothing. If anything I feel that I'm still a child: eternity and childhood are my ages.

I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives.

Every invalid is a prisoner.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.

We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.

Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.