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.

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

If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.

a writer doesn't only need the time when he's actually writing - he or she has got to have time to think and time just to let things work out. Nothing is worse for this than society. Nothing is worse for this than the abrasive, if enjoyable, effect of other people.

what a writer does is to try to make sense of life. I think that's what writing is, I think that's what painting is. It's seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder, and the incredible waste and marvelous profligate character of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life.

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

when it comes to their essential faculty as writers, all writers are androgynous beings.