Sooner Or Later, All Games Become Serious.

Science And Technology Multiply Around Us. To An Increasing Extent They Dictate The Languages In Which We Speak And Think. Either We Use Those Languages, Or We Remain Mute.

The Surrealists, And The Modern Movement In Painting As A Whole, Seemed To Offer A Key To The Strange Postwar World With Its Threat Of Nuclear War. The Dislocations And Ambiguities, In Cubism And Abstract Art As Well As The Surrealists, Reminded Me Of My Childhood In Shanghai.

Actually, The Suburbs Are Far More Sinister Places Than Most City Dwellers Imagine. Their Very Blandness Forces The Imagination Into New Areas. I Mean, One's Got To Get Up In The Morning Thinking Of A Deviant Act, Merely To Make Certain Of One's Freedom. It Needn't Be Much; Kicking The Dog Will Do.

I Don't Think Any Particular Painters Have Inspired Me, Except In A General Sense. It Was More A Matter Of Corroboration. The Visual Arts, From Manet Onwards, Seemed Far More Open To Change And Experiment Than The Novel, Though That's Only Partly The Fault Of The Writers. There's Something About The Novel That Resists Innovation.

People, Particularly Over-moralistic Americans, Have Often Seen Me As A Pessimist And Humourless To Boot, Yet I Think I Have An Almost Maniacal Sense Of Humour. The Problem Is That It's Rather Deadpan.