I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter pieces in English, and one of them got published in a literary magazine and that's how it got started. After that, graduate school didn't seem very important.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

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.

Memory narrativises itself.

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.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

The funny thing is that in Bosnia there are no words that are equivalent to fiction and nonfiction. From the storytelling point of view, the difference is artificial.