There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.

shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us

I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.

It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.

I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.