I never know who's influencing me at any time. I mean, I can take a play by Brecht and adapt it, I'm consciously adapting that play, or, as I've done with the Greek classics, Euripides and Oedipus, and I'm consciously adapting that play. Whether it influences me or not, I think it's the critics, the analysts who have to decide that. Me, I don't feel that I'm under the influence of any such sources.

We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.

Pity you can't be present during my periodic fault-finding sessions with my image in the mirror!

Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.