As a child I knew almost nothing, nothing beyond what I had picked up in my grandmother's house. All children, I suppose, come into the world like that, not knowing who they are.

I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.

In our island myth this was the prescribed end of marriages like mine: the wife goes off with someone from the Cercle Sportif, outside whose gates at night the willingly betrayed husband waits in his motorcar. The circumstances were slightly.

Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling.

I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.