Life has a funny way of becoming ordinary as soon as it can.

Three of my novels and a good number of my short stories are told from the point of view of men. I was brought up in a house of women.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

in skies of deepening blue the moon, heaven's queen was now afloat

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

“One Minus One’”and “Barcelona, 1975” are more or less autobiographical.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.