The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time.

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

I don't for a minute think that Hitler is like Joan of Arc. But I think that at that deep level of tropisms, Hitler or Stalin must have experienced the same tropisms as anyone else.

I have never sought the reason why I write.