I did not intend to stay; I had no experience in the United States - I may have been here less than 24 hours - but I knew I would never get inside there. And 'there' not being America necessarily, but that harmonious mode of living that some people are lucky enough to have in this country.

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

I am itching to criticize some well-regarded writers' works, but I am not doing it because I am perfectly aware that my critique could easily be reduced to envy or just plain meanness.

As long as there are living human beings, there will be language and stories.

What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.