I think literature has lost it's power. Great novels continue to be written, but they are no longer changing the world.

Stories are consoling, fiction is one of the consolation prizes for having lived in the world.

Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

I am not comfortable with abstract writing, stories that look like essays: you have to see, I need to see.

World is supposed to mean something that's self-contained. but nothing is self-contained.

I was never either pro-culture or counter-culture. I was in a kind of middle state.