It was quite fashionable to poke fun at Hugo. You remember Gide's Victor Hugo is the greatest French poet, alas! or Cocteau's Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo. Anyway, I hated rhetoric and eloquence. I agreed with Verlaine, who said, You have to get hold of eloquence and twist its neck off! Nonetheless, it took some courage. Nowadays it is common to debunk great men, but it wasn't then.

The Paris Review interview (1984)