Lord, why did you leave me in these woods?

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.

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

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.

You can see the diversity that pieces in the anthology represent, and then the interconnections-obvious and less obvious-between various stories or between various modes of storytelling. Diversity generates need for conversation, conversation generates common interests, as well as differences. Literature, as a human project, is all about that.

Wherever there's capitalism there's this inclination toward simplicity. There's also a human need to process complicated things by turning them into something else.

It was always clear to me that I would have to earn my readers, some I would have to find, some to create.