To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

Swimming always cleans your soul

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

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.

I don't think you have the right to shout about other people's private life.

I think that thing about the destruction of the world is there all the time, it's there every day when we look out the window.

One has to be able to twist and change and distort characters, play with them like clay, so everything fits together. Real people don't permit you to do that.