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

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 do have a sense of displacement as constant instability — the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.

I want to change something. I want to stop the germs from attacking my daughters.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.

I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore.

There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.