Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

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

When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it was a means of thought resuscitation.

Every writer owes something to a particular tradition he/she grew up in. But no serious writer - other than the militantly nationalist ones - would reduce his/her domain of influence to a single tradition. Furthermore, historical breaks are so common and large in Europe that there are ruptures in every tradition which then connect the same generations across national borders. Younger Eastern European writers, for instance, have more in common with other writers of the same age in Europe, than with the previous, communist-era generations in their own countries.

I have been on the margins in terms of having to find a place to live and getting a job, but at some point, and before that point, I always thought no matter where I am, that's the center.

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.

To write has to be related to a drive inside.