The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

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

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

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

The function of a writer is to make sense of life. It is such a mystery, it changes all the time, like the light.

Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.