When you write, you write out of your best self. Everything else drops away.

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snake

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.

I don't read my books, I write them. Once I've finished the many years it usually takes me to write them, I can't bear to read them, because I've spent too long with them already. I'm not advertising them very well, am I?

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.