I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

Your opinions are your symptoms.

The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.

The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody.

Words, words. They're all we have to go on.