But... what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly. "The past isn't real. it's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past.

Why would I care what other people are thinking? I don't care what an audience thinks of me.

I think we've all lost some kind of feeling.

But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him. “That doesn't matter.” “What does?” I asked, after a little while. “Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting, provocative and important European novelist of my generation. Period. No one else comes close. He has written two or maybe three great books, and his latest, The Map and the Territory, is one of them.

I've never written an autobiographical novel in my life. I've never touched upon my life. I've never written a single scene that I can say took place.