One always writes comedy at the moment of deepest hysteria.

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

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

The world is always in movement.

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 could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties, their needs.

The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.