You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

There is a mental space that we consciously makes our way back to, and give honour to what has formed us in this mental homeland which we carry with us always. It is important not to try to annihilate it but to take your courage in your hands and go back, and then I think you can more easily make a new beginning. A lot of us would like to know how to do this.

I've always had a fascination for the stage which has to do with transfiguration. One moment you are John Smith from East Brighton riding in your cart, and the next moment you are in a completely different world.

A form of art that I like is portraiture. I've been thinking about portraiture, and its relationship to writing and literature, biography and autobiography, and so that will be my next thing.

I am coming from an older school, and I feel that you must learn to wait. There is that essay which was about the great notion of sitting on the mountain and waiting for the muses to cross the stream, and give you the symbols that would allow you to create. The word wait seems to me to be terribly important.

Writers feel that they can't afford to wait. They must do it now, and they are so clever, and there is so much competition. I'm quite happy to wait, and quite confident that the muses will cross the stream.

One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something.