For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don't have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia - if anyone was running back into a burning house it was to salvage photos.

One builds one's life in consistency; one invests it with the belief, however unsupported by reality, that one has always been what one is now, that even in one's distant past one could recognize the seed from which this doomed flower has bloomed.

What I don't like about America is not necessarily an American thing; it's a capitalist thing. This is the Vatican of capitalism.

When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it was a means of thought resuscitation.

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

If I represent the world as it is as harmonious, that's a political position.

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.