I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you’re an artist, by children if you’re not.

Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.

I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.

Most writers deserve the reputation posterity has bestowed upon them: You can’t for long conceal the toxic spots on your character—Philip Larkin is Exhibit A—nor can you conceal your dignity, your humanism, your regard for...

Dear, I can’t write, it’s all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn’t true!