The Companion of Honour I regarded as an award from the country for 50 years of work - which I thought was okay.

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

Don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement.

Books are readable drugs.

Work Hard Until You No Longer Have To Introduce Yourself.

If you lust after someone and have an absurd and overwhelming need to protect them, then the best way to deal with the situation is to marry the person.

Yeah, the industry has always been both the enemy and the best friend of the artist. They need each other. That's the bottom line.

As a person, the only people who matter are my kids and how they see me.

So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was, is, and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

You not feeling me, fine. It costs you nothing, pay me no mind.

I lay down the Position, That whatever a Conscience well directed allows us to do for the Advancement of Truth, an erroneous Conscience will warrant for advancing a suppos'd Truth.

No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.