I also know Patrick White in Australia, both personally and as a writer, and Salman Rushdie in India.

One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.

We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?

Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!" "Who cares?

The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.