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.

There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.

The way I think of my work is that I have to think up the way to tell a story, starting from scratch. The changes in the industry concern me in a general way because I think civilization is doomed.

There's a social and human necessity for some kind of continuity, but it's not axiomatic and not something you're born into; it's something you have to work at. And one of the ways to work at it - perhaps the best - is storytelling: telling stories about yourself to others, telling stories about yourself to yourself, telling stories about others to others.

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.

To me, the solidarity of readers is far more important than the solidarity of writers, particularly since readers in fact find ways to connect over a book or books, whatever they may be.

I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.