I like the idea of a book being a democratic space which readers enter, carrying their own thoughts, and participate in a conversation, or experience of grace.

It's not that war crimes stop as soon as a novel about them is published. Literature operates slowly, it is always inching toward bliss, never quite getting there.

Washington D.C.! Congress is full of self-declared outsiders.

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.

It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely characters from stories about the past, never again unreadable, no misunderstandings possible, the pain coming from them stable and manageable. nor do you have to explain yourself to them, to justify the fact of your life.

Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.

As long as there are living human beings, there will be language and stories.