I like to blow up this notion that all we have to do as writers and artists is represent reality, which is presumably solid and self-evident, with no negotiation of the gap between myself and the world, between this body and this space, which needs narration to close it.

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.

Memoir implies the need to reveal something about yourself - to recount your life for educational purposes.

My books have been published all over Europe. They read me there, and I want to read them back. I also spend a lot of time in Europe, often meeting writers, and I'm sick of apologizing for the embarrassing shortage of translations in America.

Lord, why did you leave me in these woods?

I never thought of myself as an outsider. Because outside of what? You would have to give advantage to this space where you're not, to think of it as sovereign because you're not there. I was always in the center of where I needed to be.

It's so internalized, the way your mind works in relation to anything - it's a process, but then it isn't. It's working all the time.