In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

I think about the story while I think about other things. This is an important part of the process: I look at it sideways. If I look straight at it, it produces nothing other than what seem like complicated, brilliant designs that fall apart the following morning. In some way stories mature when you're not looking.

The more you lose, the more is to be lost, yet it matters less.

What fiction and art can do, particularly narrative art, is construct consciousness - in a sense, we have to do it for the first time, every time.

What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.

Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared, and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.

For a fight to be productive, or at least relevant, writers should fight over different demands they put upon writing (as an individual, private act) and literature (a network of relations in which we are all involved).