Quote

Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

I do think that part of literature's job is to comment on and participate in the social issues of the time.

I am also well aware that literature only has a minimal influence on political disputes or economic crises in the world, but its significance to human beings is ancient.

Today there is a division between those who write about literature and those who create it. I, obviously, don't think that should be there.

Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress.

Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

I think respectful conflict is intrinsic to the spirit of literature. It reminds us that literary history is living and evolving and thrives on us being active participants.