The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

See the moon? It hates us.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

Is death that which gives meaning to life?

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

Faint equivalents can sometimes be found ... . Or it can be rendered obliquely-an adolescent's mental image of his or her parents making love, which must be something on the order of crocodiles mating.

There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.