It is my belief that we as human beings have a need to tell stories - I think it's evolutionary. So you can think of the short story as a literary form, or you can instead think of stories.

In some way there is no real life. It's always the story of your life that you're living.

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

Everyone operates within their own domain and obviously those domains overlap to a great extent.

No reader owes me anything - I am owed nothing for my noble efforts, because my writing was always unconditional, always coming out of inner necessity.

I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me.

I am just like everybody else...because there is nobody like me in the whole world.