Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light - and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau - into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

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.

The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Ideology demands it. Society exacts it.

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

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

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.

I'm a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can't see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.