Living In A Small Town Anywhere Means

The Novel Has Become A Function Of The Fragmented Society, The Fragmented Consciousness. Human Beings Are So Divided, Are Becoming More And More Divided, And More Subdivided In Themselves, Reflecting The World, That They Reach Out Desperately, Not Knowing They Do It, For Information About Other Groups Inside Their Own Country, Let Alone About Groups In Other Countries. It Is A Blind Grasping Out For Their Own Wholeness, And The Novel-report Is A Means Toward It.

We Always Seem To Be Surprised By Events, Especially By Catastrophes, But Also By Wonderful Events. Look At 1990, The Year That The Soviet Union Collapsed And Apartheid In South Africa Collapsed And The Berlin Wall Came Down. I Don't Know Anyone Who Foresaw Those Events. It Seems To Me That As A Species We Are Constantly Trying To Adapt Ourselves To The Unexpected. In The Meantime, We Talk As If We Are In Control, And We're Not. This Seems To Me To Be The Truth About The Twentieth Century.

Basic Facts Tend Always To Be Those Most Easily Overlooked.

I Do Not Think Writers Or Anybody Would Sit Down And Think They Must Write About Some Cause, Or Theme, Or Something. If They Write About Their Own Experiences, Something True Is Going To Emerge.

It Can Be Considered A Rule That The Probable Duration Of An Empire May Be Prognosticated By The Degree To Which Its Rulers Believe In Their Own Propaganda.