When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

What I don't like about America is not necessarily an American thing; it's a capitalist thing. This is the Vatican of capitalism.

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

Outsider means "I will accept the possibility that I don't have responsibility for what is happening inside my domain."

Every writer owes something to a particular tradition he/she grew up in. But no serious writer - other than the militantly nationalist ones - would reduce his/her domain of influence to a single tradition. Furthermore, historical breaks are so common and large in Europe that there are ruptures in every tradition which then connect the same generations across national borders. Younger Eastern European writers, for instance, have more in common with other writers of the same age in Europe, than with the previous, communist-era generations in their own countries.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.

Despite all that I know rationally, and everything that I can put into words, I can say that I have difficulty giving up the notion of the nobility of art.