A desert is a place without expectation.

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.

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.

It was a miracle; it was all a miracle: and one ought to have known, from the sufferings of saints, that miracles are horror.

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

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