The books we read in childhood don’t exist anymore; they sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind. Whoever still has in him the memory and marrow of childhood should rewrite these books as...

(On Charles Dickens) It has been the peculiarity and the marvel of this man’s power, that he has invested his puppets with a charm that has enabled him to dispense with human nature.

The swing between confronting the dangerous or brutal and the beautiful or the kind is one of the elements of being human that I have battled with all my life. That mixture of love and...

Somebody told me I’m a writer. I believed them. Now I regret it.

The novelist is condemned to wander all his life. Homeless and blind like Oedipus he wanders until death. And so let us protect the novelist and adore him, with pity, honor, and love.