A novel determines its own size and shape and I've never tried to stretch an idea beyond the frame and structure it seemed to require.

The genius of the primitive mind is that it can render human helplessness in noble and beautiful ways.

The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear.

To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity.

There is a set of balances and rhythms to a novel that we can't experience in real life. So I think there is a sense in which fiction can rescue history from confusion.

All human existence is a trick of light.

When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.