The hopeless hope is one of the early harbingers of spring, bespeaking an innocent belief that the world might right its wrongs and reverse its curses simply because the trees are coming into leaf.

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.

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore.

A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing, and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls.

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

Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.