Can you imagine writers influencing things in America? Can you imagine a writer in England influencing? Absolutely not. And in France? It used to be, but no more - absolutely not. France used to, at least, have writers as diplomats, but not any more.

You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.

When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us.

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

Sincerity is never having an idea of oneself.

It's easier for the former masters to put aside the masks that hid their humanity than for the former slaves to recognise the faces underneath. Or to trust that this is not a new mask these are wearing.

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral.