One of the many things I do not understand about Americans is this: what is it like to be a citizen of a superpower, to maintain democratically the means of planetary extinction. I wonder how this contributes to the dreamlife of America, a dreamlife that is so deep and troubled.
You can’t sort of write the novel as if you’re taking dictation from heaven.
When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.
Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don’t feel the deeper rhythm there. I don’t think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it’s the only way they can write.
What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism.
Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.
I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly scared of death – but scared of dying, the process. It doesn’t seem to be a good way of doing it.
But before we face experience, that miserable enemy, let us have some more innocence, just for a while.
My belief is that everything that’s written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn’t take any notice of it.
All the things we value in society don’t mean much in fiction.
Pat Robertson at a national convention, equipped with delegates, certainly remains a terrible sight. He is a charlatan of Chaucerian dimensions.
Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose.
Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual.
You see tragedy requires persons of heroic stature. It works on the principle of people being more than humansuper-humanand also being only too human. But there just aren’t many great figures around now, so the tragic mechanisms can’t work.
He was an artist when he saw society: it never crossed his mind that society had to be like this; had any right, had any business being like this. A car in the street. Why? Why cars? This is what an artist has to be: harassed to the point of insanity or stupefaction by first principles.
For myself and my loved ones, I want the heat, which comes at the speed of light. I don’t want to have to hang about for the blast, which idles along at the speed of sound.
My father always had doubts about the Booker prize, although they evaporated on the announcement that he had won it.
The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head.
Laughter always forgives.
Is there any good reason why we cannot extend our multi-cultural generosity to include another dimension? That of time. The past, too, is another country. Its ghosts may look strange and frightening and slightly misshapen in body and mind, but all the more reason then, to welcome them to our shores.