Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

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.

Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.

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.

If you live in Europe . . . things change . . . but continuity never seems to break. You don't have to throw the past away.

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

If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.