There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write.

I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.

There is a logic [to my reading], but I can't define it. I like reading impulsively. I collect books, I have a lot of them, but most of them I have not read yet. I'll read them when they call me from the shelf.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.

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

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

I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm better than them.