The moment that you have a child - that you know that when he'll turn 18, he'll join the Army and go there for three years of compulsory service - then you can't help yourself of thinking about the future - speculating about it, dreading it or even being - trying to be more active to change it and improve it.

I never know the endings when I write. It's a turnoff when you know the ending. You lose much of your incentive to write when you already know. It's like seeing a movie a second time.

I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.

I was born at six months, and I weighed 900 grams [less than two pounds]. I have a very heroic birth story.

I think that any authentic feeling one has of life should be a feeling of defeat. It's a losing game. You're going to die. Civilization is going to end. Our society is in decline, and we should feel OK about it because Roman society was in decline and before it the Assyrian one was, and they disappeared off this earth and we will disappear too.

In my stories I can kiss the girls I want to kiss and punch the girls I want to punch. Nobody pays a price for it.

In the army you feel violated - there's no private space. Writing was a life-saver, a way of recovering private territory.