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.

In the olden days, a memoir was something written by Churchill and people like that, because they had a grand experience and considered it useful for future generations. And then it became what it became - a public purging in which other people have the chance to judge you and then forgive you, perhaps learning something from your sorry example.

I have two homes, like someone who leaves their hometown and/or parents and then establishes a life elsewhere. They might say that they're going home when they return to see old friends or parents, but then they go home as well when they go to where they live now. Sarajevo is home, Chicago is home.

Memory narrativises itself.

I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.

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.

It's so internalized, the way your mind works in relation to anything - it's a process, but then it isn't. It's working all the time.