A lot of the fiction I read growing up was post-war American, and not all of it centers on Manhattan, but around people of the Mad Men generation, people like John Cheever and, in more modern times, Don DeLillo, who I always mention.

The East is very mysterious to Westerners. Even post-Cold War, it's still an unknown entity.

You see the button with the guy with the tray, and you push it, and he arrives with a sandwich! And you think: "Yes! Yes! I control sandwich monkey! I live in magic land, magic land, magic land"

I'm organised in some ways, but not in others.

Why do I even dare to think I could dream I could imagine I could hope?!

Women are like canoes, full of soup. At first everyone is suspicious but then everyone wants one.

I'm fascinated by how you'll change your position so many times over a lifetime, but really what you're doing is occupying a series of positions on a landscape.