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.

Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.

In various and different circumstances certain objects and individuals are going to turn out to be vital. The wager of survival cannot, by its nature, reveal which, in advance of events.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

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.

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.

Very often we support change, and then are swept away by the change. I think that...you just make your own response to your own generation. A response adequate to your time.