If you're a writer there will come at least one morning in your life when you wake up and want to kill your agent.
[On being a judge for the 1986 Booker Prize:] I got to the point where I couldn't read a laundry list without considering it for the Booker Prize.
Our historical bequest is sublime. I have inherited a fragmented but highly creative exile and, since 1948, a home. I don't know that I want to settle there. I prefer the creative spur of exile. () But wherever I am I shall be Jewish, and that sound will inform every syllable I write. I am blessed with a long ancestry of wisdom, prophecy, and promise, a line of overwhelming creative achievements, courage, humor, and, above all, a dogged and chronic permanence, the greatest legacy of all.
