I rarely return to characters. My characters, at least most of them, are much more a part of that superorganism that is the story than separate and independent creatures.

I tried once in my life to write a novel. I had written something like 80 pages of it when my laptop got stolen. When I told people this, they acted as if something tragic had happened, but I kind of felt relieved, grateful to the thief who saved me from another year of something that felt more like homework than fun.

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

As a monogamous creature, I feel sometimes that it fills up a function that affairs have in married people's life.

For me taking a pragmatic decision when it comes to art is almost an oxymoron. The reason I first picked up a pen and wrote a story had nothing pragmatic in it.

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

I'm not saying that I don't experience people in life as evil, but writing is not a place of alienation; writing is the place where we can try to be human.