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.

I do believe - and I know I shouldn't - that art transcends money and success and any of that. You can still do it if you're not clinging to the notion of nobility.

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

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.

I have been on the margins in terms of having to find a place to live and getting a job, but at some point, and before that point, I always thought no matter where I am, that's the center.

I write and read with the assumption that literature contains knowledge of human experience that is not available otherwise.

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