Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.

it's impossible to conquer all fear and loss by preparation. There are always sources of desolation that aren't taken into account because no one knows what they will be.

In a certain sense a writer is 'selected' by his subject - his subject being the consciousness of his own era.

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

Disaster is private, in its way, as love is.

Fiction is a way of exploring possibilities present but undreamt of in the living of a single life.