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.

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.

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

I suppose I'm interested in sorrow, which is very different from depression or despair. Sorrow is continuous with the world; it allows for creativity.

It's so internalized, the way your mind works in relation to anything - it's a process, but then it isn't. It's working all the time.

My books have been published all over Europe. They read me there, and I want to read them back. I also spend a lot of time in Europe, often meeting writers, and I'm sick of apologizing for the embarrassing shortage of translations in America.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.