What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.

Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them.

The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.

Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.