I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.
The greatest pleasure is not – say – sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity – well, that’s the job of the writer.
You have the older generation like Iris Murdoch and Angus Wilson who are not as old as Graham Greene, but still are coming on. I dare say anyone who knew the scene better than I know it could fill it in with a very satisfactory supply of novels.
I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.
