Making up characters and places and plots, unlike fixing your plumbing or doing dishes, is anything but practical or rational. I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right.

My mother, for example, told the German officer not to kill her. She'd make it worth his while. And then, when they were doing it, she pulled a knife out of her belt and sliced open his chest, just like she used to open chicken breasts to stuff with rice for the Sabbath meal.

Life keeps being a beautiful and frustrating experience.

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

It's funny, but I think my stories - the good ones - they're much smarter than I am.

The best stories you usually hear are stories that people feel some type of urgency about.

When I started writing my stories, I thought that not only nobody outside my language, but nobody outside my neighbourhood would get them.