It wasn’t until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you’ve got to write your own books and nobody else’s, and then everything followed from there.
Beethoven for listening; Liszt, Chopin, and Beethoven for playing as well as Bach and Prokofiev and so on. If I kept going, this list would spiral. It’s as wide as literature; in fact, it is probably wider.
I know there isn’t no beast-not with claws and all that, I mean-but I know there isn’t no fear, either.” Piggy paused. “Unless-” Ralph moved restlessly. “Unless what?” “Unless we get frightened of people.
Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.
The water rose further and dressed Simon’s coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble.
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.
Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.
