Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing.

The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the outward evidence.

What I'm trying to do [in Winter Journal] is to tell the story of a man's life from birth, but there are different versions of him, four different versions.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It's the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

I don't know why I write. If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't have to. But it is a compulsion. You don't choose it, it chooses you. And I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

Money, of course, is never just money. It's always something else, and it's always something more, and it always has the last word.

I met Peter Brook, the theater director, who's been based in Paris for many years at the Bouffes du Nord. I admire him tremendously. Some years ago, he was in New York, and he gave an interview with The Times, and what he said was this: "In my work, I try to capture the closeness of the everyday and the distance of myth. Because, without the closeness, you can't be moved, and without the distance, you can't be amazed." Isn't that extraordinary?