Writing is making sense of life.

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

Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.

I have learned since that sometimes the things we want most are impossible for us. You may long to come home, yet wander forever.

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.

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.

Success sometimes may be defined as a disaster put on hold. Qualified. Has to be.