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

There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.

There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

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

For people who are displaced, you can reconstruct the story of your life from the objects you have access to, but if you don't have the objects then there are holes in your life. This is why people in Bosnia - if anyone was running back into a burning house it was to salvage photos.

I think it's interesting, from a creative point of view, to have witnessed the loss of consciousness on a national level and on a cultural level - Bush had 91 percent support in the polls after 9/11. We wanted to kick some ass!