A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society - things can look dark, th…

Ideally, a book of letters should be published posthumously. The advantages are obvious: the editor enjoys a free hand, and the author enjoys a perfect hiding …

As long as there is one upright man, as long as their is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the one thing…

The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does n…

Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdote…