It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.

Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.

You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another. You cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.

Terrorism [is] a biological consequence of the multinationals, just as a day of fever is the reasonable price of an effective vaccine . . . The conflict is between great powers, not between demons and heroes. Unhappily, therefore, is the nation that finds the "heroes" underfoot, especially if they still think in religious terms and involve the population in their bloody ascent to an uninhabited paradise.

When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.

I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.

In other words, although I don't like them, we do need noble-spirited souls.