Because history is only an aggregate of personal hostilities, personal prejudices, personal blindness and irrationality, there are times when we have to live against it.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made of layers, cells, constellations.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

Things aren't the way they are, they're the way you are

A man who lives unrelated to other human beings dies. But a man who lives unrelated to himself also dies.

Secrets. Need to disguise. The novel was born of this.