As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn't seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

Only one novel is a novel: that is a successful novel.

You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.

For a small island, the place is remarkably diverse. Writers tend to see things from their own points of view, looking in one direction very much.

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

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.