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

The privilege of a middle-class, stable, bourgeois life is that you can pretend that you are not complicated and project yourself as a solid, uncomplicated person, with refined life goals and achievements.

The funny thing is that in Bosnia there are no words that are equivalent to fiction and nonfiction. From the storytelling point of view, the difference is artificial.

Arabs are a complete abstraction in the propaganda world and all the death and destruction is completely unreal to Americans.

If you have information you've got the world by the balls. But we have to convert information into knowledge in order to make it humanly useful.

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

If I represent the world as it is as harmonious, that's a political position.