It's absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It's a betrayal of whatever talent you have.

If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.

In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.

Music has no limits of a life-span.

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

Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.

If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.