I'm Sorry To Say That Far Worse

The End Of Secrecy Would Be The End Of The Novel - Especially The English Novel. The English Novel Requires Social Secrecy, Personal Secrecy.

I Think The Novel, Its Business Is The Investigation Of Human Nature.

Perhaps The Greatest Reading Pleasure Has An Element Of Self-annihilation. To Be So Engrossed That You Barely Know You Exist.

How Can A Novelist Achieve Atonement When, With Her Absolute Power Of Deciding Outcomes, She Is Also God? There Is No One, No Entity Or Higher Form That She Can Appeal To, Or Be Reconciled With, Or That Can Forgive Her. There Is Nothing Outside Her. In Her Imagination She Has Set The Limits And The Terms. No Atonement For God, Or Novelists, Even If They Are Atheists. It Was Always An Impossible Task, And That Was Precisely The Point. The Attempt Was All.

I Did Not Kill My Father, But I Sometimes Felt I Had Helped Him On His Way. And But For The Fact That It Coincided With A Landmark In My Own Physical Growth, His Death Seemed Insignificant Compared To What Followed.