I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

What I was interested in is the lens organizing my sovereign space. I avoid the term outsider and also exile for the same reason. Outsider implies a kind of nobility.

I believe people are much more complicated than they can handle.

Everyone operates within their own domain and obviously those domains overlap to a great extent.

I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm better than them.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.

I did not intend to stay; I had no experience in the United States - I may have been here less than 24 hours - but I knew I would never get inside there. And 'there' not being America necessarily, but that harmonious mode of living that some people are lucky enough to have in this country.