At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

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.

Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It's as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.

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

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

Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.

I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad.