Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

what a writer does is to try to make sense of life. I think that's what writing is, I think that's what painting is. It's seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder, and the incredible waste and marvelous profligate character of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life.

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.

I couldn't be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings.