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!

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.