It is easier to endure than to change. But once one has changed, what was endured is hard to recall.

Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.

Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcende nce.

Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it.

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.