We, as writers, have to figure out a way to create a consciousness in language. It's crazy even to attempt to do that.

I have been on the margins in terms of having to find a place to live and getting a job, but at some point, and before that point, I always thought no matter where I am, that's the center.

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

I like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but not to condescend to the reader by enmeshing her/him into some sort of a postmodern coop.

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I had no choice but to stay here after the civil war, so I enrolled at Northwestern in a master's program and studied American literature.

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