We Are Several People Fitted

I've Always Disliked Words Like Inspiration. Writing Is Probably Like A Scientist Thinking About Some Scientific Problem, Or An Engineer About An Engineering Problem.

I'm Always Astounded At The Way We Automatically Look At What Divides And Separates Us. We Never Look At What People Have In Common. If You See It, Black And White People, Both Sides Look To See The Differences, They Don't Look At What They Have Together. Men And Women, And Old And Young, And So On. And This Is A Disease Of The Mind, The Way I See It. Because In Actual Fact, Men And Women Have Much More In Common Than They Are Separated.

Why Were The Europeans Bothered About The Soviet Union At All? It Was Nothing To Do With Us. China Had Nothing To Do With Us. Why Were We Not Building, Without Reference To The Soviet Union, A Good Society In Our Own Countries? But No, We Were All - In One Way Or Another - Obsessed With The Bloody Soviet Union, Which Was A Disaster. What People Were Supporting Was Failure. And Continually Justifying It.

I Think Novelists Perform Many Useful Tasks For Their Fellow Citizens, But One Of The Most Valuable Is This: To Enable Us To See Ourselves As Others See Us.

People Who Have Lived Through A War Know That As It Approaches, An At First Secret, Unacknowledged, Elation Begins, As If An Almost Inaudible Drum Is Beating ... An Awful, Illicit, Violent Excitement Is Abroad. Then The Elation Becomes Too Strong To Be Ignored Or Overlooked: Then Everyone Is Possessed By It.