The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.

A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition.

First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there's a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger.

I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read... I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.

I hate my life. I'm at the point where I want to hear about other people's lives. it's like switching from fiction to biography.

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