I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

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

When I found myself in the U.S., and the war was at full swing in Bosnia, I read for survival - it was a means of thought resuscitation.

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.

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

Even if you tried to extinguish your personality, what is left in the story will reflect it, perhaps by its negation. Our lives provide the bricks from which we build these cathedrals.