Writing the novel felt so private to me! I think publishing a novel is quite public and exposing, and what's a little frightening to me right now is the fact that it feels so entirely opposed to the privacy that is writing.

I realized that there was an intellectual content in music, a kind of thinking, that I would never be able to hear.

I am a gay writer, absolutely. And in no way does that fact limit the reach or importance of what I write.

If my novel gets any attention in Bulgaria, it will be as a scandal: a book about a teacher at a famous school and his relationship with a prostitute. I doubt very much it will be evaluated on its merits as literature. If Bulgarian were the book's only language, that would be painful and limiting to me as a writer. Since my book also exists in English - where it isn't scandalous at all - I feel comfortable with the possibility of scandal.

My first MFA was in poetry, and it was very much part of a professional trajectory leading to life as a professor. But in my second and third years at Harvard, I realized I didn't want an academic life.

Whenever I go to New York I try to soak up as much live music as I can, including as many nights at the opera as I can manage.

A Heart So White is simply one of the best novels I know. I'm also thrilled by Javier Marías sentences, by how elegant they are while also being so permissive in relation to the niceties of grammar and so open to the prospect of surprise. He's a genius.