There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.
Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.
I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.
Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.
I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.