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.

The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.

What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.

People come and go all the time; the world has always been in movement.

I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.

It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter'.