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.

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

I will say I am the sum of my books.

My life is short. I can't listen to banality.

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 feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.