Everybody is interesting for an hour, but few people can last more than two.

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.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

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.

If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.

I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery.