I think it would be very foolish not to take the irrational seriously.
I didn't mind being unpopular at school, because everyone else was a heathen.
Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.
Whatever is powerful to you can be translated into something which will matter to somebody that you will never know.
We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.
I don't read reviews because by then it's too late - whatever anyone says, the book won't change. It is written.
Always in my books, I like to throw that rogue element into a stable situation and then see what happens.
There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.
I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you.
I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.
I had huge ambition for literature. I don't see the point of doing anything if you don't have ambition for it.
What you risk reveals what you value.
That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?
I wanted to invent myself as a fictional character. And I did, and it has caused a great deal of confusion.
The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home.