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.

There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.

You have to suspend thinking in narratives. The moment you are conscious of yourself the gap opens up. And in this gap, stories are generated.

I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it doesn't concern me. It'll come back if it's worth it.

Anything that might come under arts should not be subject to the whims of the idiotic market because the market's stupid, and it gravitates toward simplicity - towards essentializing things so they can be sold.

It seemed that we loved each other better when there were large swaths of two continents between us. The daily work of love was often hard to perform at home.

Arabs are a complete abstraction in the propaganda world and all the death and destruction is completely unreal to Americans.