Perhaps the best way to write is to do so as if one were already dead, afraid of no one's reactions, answerable to no one's views.

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.

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.

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

People give one another things that can't be gift wrapped.

Nothing fades so quickly as what is unchanged.

It's absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It's a betrayal of whatever talent you have.