No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.

Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.

He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.

I love to cook and I've cooked a lot of Bulgarian food over the years.

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.