I much preferred winning to thinking and I didn't like losing at all.

Rilke said that art can come only out of inner necessity. I write because I must. Or because I cannot not write.

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.

I loved you because there was no other place for me to go. We were married because we did not know what else to do with each other. You never knew me, nothing about me, what died inside me, what lived invisibly.

I've been a Nick Cave fan since the early '80s when he was part of The Birthday Party thing singing Australian self-destructive rock band and I've always followed his work and loved it.

I know a lot of people in the city, at all levels, horizontally and vertically - and that to me is a privilege, to me as a person but also a writer. I've dined with billionaires, and I play soccer with busboys.

The balls do not make a writer.