My Grandmother Was Very Fierce

History Could Claw Upward As Well As Down. The Powerful Could Be Deafened By The Cries Of The Poor.

Only The Foolish, Blinded By Language's Conventions, Think Of Fire As Red Or Gold. Fire Is Blue At It's Melancholy Rim, Green In It's Envious Heart. It May Burn White, Or Even, In It's Greatest Rages, Black.

I Stand With Charlie Hebdo, As We All Must, To Defend The Art Of Satire.

I Can Walk Into A Bookshop And Point Out A Number Of Books That I Find Very Unattractive In What They Say. But It Doesn't Occur To Me To Burn The Bookshop Down. If You Don't Like A Book, Read Another Book. If You Start Reading A Book And You Decide You Don't Like It, Nobody Is Telling You To Finish It.

I Have A General Feeling That Writers And Artists Who Are In This Peculiar Situation, Of Being A Persecuted Artist, All Anyone Ever Asks About Is The Persecution. It May Well Be That's The Last Thing In The World They Want To Talk About. There Were Many Years In Which Every Journalist In The World Wanted To Talk To Me, But Nobody Wanted To Talk To Me About My Work. That Felt Deeply Frustrating Because I Felt There Was An Attempt To Stifle Me As An Artist. The Best Revenge I Could Have Was To Write.