Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collectors' item in its own way - not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, and suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

I don't feel, God dictated that I should write.

I'd rather go along with this sense of illusion that I'm a neutral beast going along through life doing everything that's preordained.

You can become much more independent, much more courageous with a bank account. And also, much more independent and self-reliant when you know you have money behind you.

You can be a hunchback and a dwarf and what-all. If you write beautifully, you can write beautifully.

It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.