To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn't matter.'
If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.
I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.
Whenever I have had to write fiction, I've always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.
I profoundly feel that people are letting you down all the time.
I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not.
