It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.

I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.