Help is dangerous because it exists outside the human economy: the only payment for help is gratitude.

We who were born were not witnesses to our birth: like death, it is something we are forever after trying to catch sight of.

Christianity has kept itself going for centuries on hope alone, and has perpetrated all manner of naughtiness in the meantime.

I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

My children are living, thinking human beings. It isn't in my power to regret them, for they belong to themselves.

The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.

It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiasticall y they drive you to your own destruction.