I was a nerdy kid and I was writing and showing other fellows who are still my friends what I was writing. We were sharing that and kept sharing it. The experiences they had were so different than mine.

Publishing my book is like giving it away. At first you start talking about it, but you are basically letting go. I won't say it's like giving birth because I haven't given birth. It's more like when your children leave home.

As a child, all you see is that adults are not playing. Adults are not talking too much. Adults don't want to relate to each other.

I am still trying to find out things. And I inevitably tell myself the story in different ways every time I think about it.

I knew little, but at least I knew that: no one could speak for someone else. That although we might want to tell other people's stories, we always end up telling our own.

I don't have any doubts that I need writing. I need it personally because this is the way I think.

The ways in which a standardized language test induces storytelling, for example, is the opposite of creative writing; you have to learn a logical way to start a story, whereas in creative writing you may begin at the end or begin at the middle of the story.