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.

What I was interested in is the lens organizing my sovereign space. I avoid the term outsider and also exile for the same reason. Outsider implies a kind of nobility.

Wherever there's capitalism there's this inclination toward simplicity. There's also a human need to process complicated things by turning them into something else.

My skin was the border between the world and me.

Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.

The mind is complicated and you can't trace the roots of its processes, but there is something about mathematical and algorithmic patterns that I like to recognize in things.

For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don't have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia - if anyone was running back into a burning house it was to salvage photos.