Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect.

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.

There are several reasons why Russians view the oppressive state positively. First in the Russian Orthodox religion there is an understanding of authority as something sent by God.

I call religion a natural authority but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

Then of course there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.

Oddly I do have a problem with authority. I find it very difficult to knuckle down and follow rules. Which are the classic symptoms of someone who has a troubled relationship with their father. And yet I never had a problem with my father.

Teenage readers also have a different relationship with the authors whose work they value than adult readers do. I loved Toni Morrison but I don't have any desire to follow her on Twitter. I just want to read her books.

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.

When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness looking instead for authority validation and approval from others we give our personal power away.