When I learnt to write I became my own master, I became very strong, and that strength is with me to this very day.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.

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 am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

Writers should provoke disagreement.