I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning arguments, respect for others, and eventually, thought neither of us knew it at the time, chess games... "Come from the South, blow from the wind - poom! - North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen."

I have a writer's memory, which makes everything worse than maybe it actually was.

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.

Why do you think you are missing something you never had?

I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.