Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows.

He was in a terrible state- that of consciousness.

You see tragedy requires persons of heroic stature. It works on the principle of people being more than humansuper-humanand also being only too human. But there just aren't many great figures around now, so the tragic mechanisms can't work.

Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.

I don't think I'd like Manhattan anymore. My mother-in-law lives there, and you go there. But I like looking at it from a distance. It's a fantastic sight - every time, it awes me.

I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves.