It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?.

Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind..

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere..

It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening..

The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life..

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed..

The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was o….

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me..

The novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for ar….

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness..

How extraordinary it is that one feels most guilt about the sins one is unable to commit..

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the be….

It is well known that, when two authors meet, they at once start talking about money-like everyone else..

I am under the spell of language, which has ruled me since I was 10..

The difference between farce and humour in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humour varies its note,….

Those mausoleums of inactive masculinity are places for men who prefer armchairs to women..

I felt the beginning of a passion, hopeless in the long run, but very nourishing, for identifying myself with people who were not my own, and whose l….

The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel..

Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough..

A short story is. . .frequently the celebration of character at bursting point..

All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the f….