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

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.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.

Sometimes I don't write at all. Someone once asked me, "What do you do when you're not writing?" And I said, "I idle."

I had an epiphany: I was a loser.

I want a book to contain a world - indeed the world. Writing is my main means of engagement with the world and I want the scars of that engagement to be left in the language.

Whatever solidarity I have established with other writers individually, it is usually organized around books. We connected as readers, as it were, not writers.