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

Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.

Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? Can you imagine a writer in England influencing? Absolutely not. And in France? It used to be, but no more - absolutely not. France used to, at least, have writers as diplomats, but not any more.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

The caged eagle become a metaphor for all forms of isolation, the ultimate in imprisonment. A zoo is prison.

I believe - I know (there are not many things I should care to dogmatize about, on the subject of writing) that writers need solitude, and seek alienation of a kind every day of their working lives. (And remember, they are not even aware when and when not they are working.) ... The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer.

When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us.