There is music in words, and it can be heard you know, by thinking.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.

I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.

A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen... Except the act of writing.

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

Stories distribute the suffering so that it can be borne.