You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that's only because you're afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear.

You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.

I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.

I think the word is counter-productive. Capitalism is counter-productive to art, just as the Catholic Church was counter-productive to art four hundred years ago.

We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that's only because you're afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear.

I was always totally convinced that three weeks after the revolution they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.