You have to suspend thinking in narratives. The moment you are conscious of yourself the gap opens up. And in this gap, stories are generated.

I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm better than them.

I wish I could avoid the people who have threatened me. My favorite threat is that I will be thrown in the River Miljacka, which is at most knee-deep, with my feet bound in cement.

Where can you go from nowhere, except deeper into nowhere?

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

When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it was a means of thought resuscitation.

I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.