One of the things my friends would tell you is that I hang out with a lot of non-writers - just regular people like bankers and teachers, and I actually try to steer our talk away from my work when I get together with them.

What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?

To be honest, Im not that much of a reader of Korean fiction, since so little is translated.

For no matter the shadows of an age, the picture of a young couple in love, we are told, speaks most luminously of the future, as the span of that passion makes us believe we can overleap any walls, obliterate whatever obstacles.

I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

Usually, when you're talking about work with other writers it's because something seriously bad is going on with your work and you've absolutely thrown out a lifeline and you're hoping that someone will help you with something. Either there's some bad feeling you have about the work, or sometimes it's not specific - just kind of solidarity.