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

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.

I do believe - and I know I shouldn't - that art transcends money and success and any of that. You can still do it if you're not clinging to the notion of nobility.

I actually didn't listen to the Beatles song 'Nowhere Man' when I was writing my book of the same name. What I listened to a lot was 'Abbey Road.' Its disjointedness and its readiness to confuse only to delight were inspiring to me.

There's a social and human necessity for some kind of continuity, but it's not axiomatic and not something you're born into; it's something you have to work at. And one of the ways to work at it - perhaps the best - is storytelling: telling stories about yourself to others, telling stories about yourself to yourself, telling stories about others to others.

No reader owes me anything - I am owed nothing for my noble efforts, because my writing was always unconditional, always coming out of inner necessity.

As long as there are living human beings, there will be language and stories.