I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.

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.

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

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.

You don't want your neurosurgeon to have doubts about the meaning of it all while he or she is operating on your brain.

Europe is a rapidly changing place, on every level. Immigration, post-communist transitions, the unification, steady presence of war and conflict, the inescapable challenges to the notion of national literature/culture-it all exerts pressure upon writers who must be aware of the transformational possibilities of the situation.

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.