We dreamt of light, but hoped for darkness.

No reader owes me anything - I am owed nothing for my noble efforts, because my writing was always unconditional, always coming out of inner necessity.

I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction.

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

My country's main exports are stolen cars and sadness.

I don't know the numbers, but roughly half of the people who came through Ellis Island returned home. They came here to make money, not to make history.

It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely characters from stories about the past, never again unreadable, no misunderstandings possible, the pain coming from them stable and manageable. nor do you have to explain yourself to them, to justify the fact of your life.