In my firm, we dealt in lies. Advertising is that ... the skilful use of the truth to mislead, to spoil, to debase.

The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.

Writing was a chimney for my blazing ambitions.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

What I do not know and cannot even hope to understand before I die is why human beings are willfully, coldly, matter-of-factly cruel to each other ... What nerve has atrophied in the torturer, or worse is sensually moved?

Novelists who treat violence and cruelty as something to be exploited for their effect, or to enjoy the pleasure of an evacuation, are carriers of a singularly unpleasant disease.

If the novel is dying, I see no chance that dismembering it will revive it.