We make a mistake to condescend to the past as if it were preparatory to our own time.

There is really no fiction or non-fiction; there is only narrative. One mode of perception has no greater claim on the truth than the other; that the distance has perhaps to do with distance - narrative distance - from the characters; it has to do with the kind of voice that is talking, but it certainly hasn't to do with the common distribution between fact and imagination.

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

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.

Longing, the hope for fulfillment, is the one unwavering passion of the world's commerce.

I have been everywhere because I don't know what I'm looking for.

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.