Great writers arrive among us like new diseases - threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple - to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, That snores when you pick it up. If the ghost cries, they carry it To their lips and soothe it to sleep With sounds. And …