The balls do not make a writer.

The beauty of literature - also its limit - is that it is inescapably personal, even if you're writing science fiction.

Europe is a rapidly changing place, on every level. Immigration, post-communist transitions, the unification, steady presence of war and conflict, the inescapable challenges to the notion of national literature/culture-it all exerts pressure upon writers who must be aware of the transformational possibilities of the situation.

I resist when someone calls me a novelist: it implies some kind of inherent superiority of the novel. I'm not a novelist, I'm a writer.

Projecting yourself until everything is talking about you is, of course, a self-flattering form of self-pity

I want to change something. I want to stop the germs from attacking my daughters.

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.