Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening.

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.