I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.

If you have to read to cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.

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.

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.

Writer's block! It doesn't exist. You just long for ideas to go away so you have an idea of peace.

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.

I like it that they [disciples] feed me and pay for my clothes and protect me. And in return I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. Just as I cannot breathe the breath of another or help the heart of someone else to beat or their bones not to weaken or their flesh not to shrivel, I cannot say more than I can say. And I know how deeply this disturbs them, and it would make me smile, this earnest need for foolish anecdote or sharp simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all, except that I have forgotten how to smile.