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.

What you demand from storytelling is a moral - even political - import. I tend to shun that didactic aspect.

To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways to connect over a book or books, whatever they may be.

What fiction and art can do, particularly narrative art, is construct consciousness - in a sense, we have to do it for the first time, every time.

Belief and delusion are incestuous siblings.

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

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