Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.

Growing up during World War II certainly affected my whole view of life, but I hardly know how, it goes so deep. What's hard to explain now is that, though we were never invaded, and bombed only once and ineffectively on the coast of Oregon, everybody in the country was in that war. Everything we did was influenced by it - eating, traveling, dressing, thinking - everything in daily life.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too. Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally, language used wrongly, breeds lies, half-truths, confusion. In that sense you can say that grammar is morality. And it is in that sense that I say a writer's first duty is to use language well.

I've got some gift for languages. You follow your gift. But Latin's not easy.

To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.