Of course I've enjoyed having the Nobel Prize, the prestige that goes along with it, the money that came with it in particular. I was the typical, still am to some extent, impecunious writer, just struggling to make ends meet, so that, nobody's going to deny that at all. In fact, if they want to give it to me a second time, I'm standing by, ready to receive it, but it's a problem, it's a real problem and then expectations and then you have monsters like Sani Abacha who come up from time to time and who would have died a happy man if he'd succeeded in hanging a Nobel Laureate for literature.

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.

I tend to work best as a one-man Task Force, including even the roles of messenger, coffee maker and office cleaner.

Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.

I think I'm a very lazy writer and by that I mean that I do not battle, I don't struggle too hard against it. If I have difficulties in the writing, I just go and do other things. I don't feel a compulsion to write.

Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.

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