We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

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.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.

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

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.