Rilke said that art can come only out of inner necessity. I write because I must. Or because I cannot not write.

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.

I did not intend to stay; I had no experience in the United States - I may have been here less than 24 hours - but I knew I would never get inside there. And 'there' not being America necessarily, but that harmonious mode of living that some people are lucky enough to have in this country.

What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.

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

If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

I don't like having a teaching job - office hours and conferences and committees and bosses and all that - but I tend to enjoy teaching, and I design the course in such a way that there'll be pleasure in that.