Quote Category

My dad told me that no one could ever make it as a writer, that my chances were equivalent to winning the lottery – which was good for me, because I like to have something to prove.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

I want to get within myself and write. I really, really want to write.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence – a lot passes you by – simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

I was about 13, in some ways, when I wrote the first book. Approximately 18 when I wrote the second.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.