But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

Publishers don't nurse you; they buy and sell you.

Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other ­people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.