Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.

Projecting yourself until everything is talking about you is, of course, a self-flattering form of self-pity

Europe has never been a monolithic space, it contains a lot of people, a lot of languages and infinite supplies of history. I didn't need to do anything to showcase diversity. It is a condition of life and art in Europe, contained in every random sample.

I don't like having a teaching job - office hours and conferences and committees and bosses and all that - but I tend to enjoy teaching, and I design the course in such a way that there'll be pleasure in that.

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

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

There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write.