Home is, I suppose just a child's idea. A house at night, and a lamp in the house. A place to feel safe.

I grew up in a small place and left it when I was quite young and entered the bigger world.

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

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

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'.

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.

You need someone to see what you've done, to read it and to understand it and to appreciate what's gone into it.