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

when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.

I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.

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

From Ernest Hemingway's stories I learned to listen within my stories for what went unsaid by my characters.

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it.

I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.