To write has to be related to a drive inside.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness.

We apply the language that is comforting and comfortable and familiar in order to grasp that which confuses and scares us. That is the first step toward cliché and stereotype, as they're comforting devices. They reduce the confusing world to the already familiar. We're always smoothing out the bumps of actual living to turn it into narratable life.

I believe people are much more complicated than they can handle.

I think about the story while I think about other things. This is an important part of the process: I look at it sideways. If I look straight at it, it produces nothing other than what seem like complicated, brilliant designs that fall apart the following morning. In some way stories mature when you're not looking.

Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.