Our daughter was born in Chicago, and she's already showing it. The temperature has to be approaching zero for her to wear a hat.

There's no bad writing; you did something. I was operating inside language, and I did something. I'm not ashamed of it.

The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.

I did not intend to stay; I had no experience in the United States - I may have been here less than 24 hours - but I knew I would never get inside there. And 'there' not being America necessarily, but that harmonious mode of living that some people are lucky enough to have in this country.

We apply the language that is comforting and comfortable and familiar in order to grasp that which confuses and scares us. That is the first step toward cliché and stereotype, as they're comforting devices. They reduce the confusing world to the already familiar. We're always smoothing out the bumps of actual living to turn it into narratable life.

Memoir implies the need to reveal something about yourself - to recount your life for educational purposes.

I do have a sense of displacement as constant instability — the uninterrupted existence of everything that I love and care about is not guaranteed at all. I wait for catastrophes.