“Many great writers inspired me, of course, but inspiration is not the same as a direct influence. I was often stirred by the beauty of great prose, the passion and startling intensity of hard-won truths, which leapt from that creative fire. … For the writer, therefore the reader, fresh truth is exhilarating, even painful truth, as in Kafka or Céline. Isn’t that what good writing finally arrives at? The insights and epigrams of Alexander Pope weren’t clichés when he wrote them, any more than those resounding lines in Shakespeare. They only became dog-eared from overuse.”

“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”

“Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.”

“Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.”

“The great classic writers, it will be said, sought rather to proclaim universal truths than to leave their imprint on them.”

“As I describe inspiration I do not want you to think I am speaking of religion.
That which takes us by surprise - moments of happiness - that is inspiration. Inspiration which is different from daily care.
Many people as adults are so startled by inspiration which is different from daily care that they think they are unique In having had it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Inspiration is there all the time.”

“Even in stories written by exceptional writers, even when they write a well-crafted piece…the mother is a cliché, though it might be a good rendering of a cliché.”

“A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.”

“I remember—the interruption of the hon. Gentleman reminds me of the words of a great writer, who said that "Grace was beauty in action." Sir, I say that justice is truth in action. Truth should animate an opposition, and I hope it does animate this opposition.;”

“I write exactly as I speak, so therefore I would not say any writer influenced me at all.”