Keenness of hearing revives when one is alone.

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

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.

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

What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else.

Writing is making sense of life.

The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.