In our time, we have become too interested in the artist and his or her character and experience as a way of understanding art. In my view, you should be able to read a book or see a film without knowing a single thing about conditions or circumstances or character of the artist, and experience the work to the full without such information. Sometimes I feel - speaking for myself - that people know much too much about me, and I wish people knew less and could just read these books and respond to them purely as words on a page.

I had become a kind of information magpie, gathering to myself all manner of shiny scraps of fact and hokum and books and art-history and politics and music and film, and developing, too, a certain skill in manipulating and arranging these pitiful shards so that they glittered and caught the light. Fool's gold, or priceless nuggets mined from my singular childhood's rich bohemian seam? I leave it to others to decide.

The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

The enemy for the fanatic is pleasure, which makes it extremely important to continue to indulge in pleasure. Dance madly. That is how you get rid of terrorism.

I seem to have fallen for women with missing parents. Goodness knows what it signifies.

The only privilege literature deserves - and this privilege it requires in order to exist - is the privilege of being in the arena of discourse, the place where the struggle of our languages can be acted out.

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.