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

The privilege of a middle-class, stable, bourgeois life is that you can pretend that you are not complicated and project yourself as a solid, uncomplicated person, with refined life goals and achievements.

Despite all that I know rationally, and everything that I can put into words, I can say that I have difficulty giving up the notion of the nobility of art.

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 a hard time imagining a country or a government where I would say, "Oh, this is good," where I could live under a government that I respect for a day or a week, even to see what it feels like.

Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation.

I had an epiphany: I was a loser.