Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.

Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.

A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.