Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.

I went to work in 1962, and by '64 I was writing all the time, every night and every weekend. It didn't occur to me that, having read nothing and knowing nothing, I was in no position to write a book.

People do not love those whose eyes show that they are somewhere else

I have never begun a novel which wasn't going to stretch me further than I had ever stretched before.

Swimming always cleans your soul

I think it's really boring, from the point of view of the novelist, to write about yourself. Tedious. But that's very hard to explain to people who really don't believe in the possibility of invention.

You could not tell a story like this. A story like this you could only feel.