Teaching high school was my real training as a novelist: it got me out of my head, and (at least a little) out of books, and invested me in the lives of others and the world around me.

Bulgaria is a fascinating, beautiful, difficult country, and I fell in love with it.

Teaching high school was my real training as a novelist: it got me out of my head, and (at least a little) out of books, and invested me in the lives of others and the world around me.

I think history is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way.

The academy is an incredibly sheltered world, and I do think it's important for writers to get out from under that shelter, at least for a while, to see what the world looks like from outside it.

I do think that calling a book nonfiction affirms a kind of responsibility to an attempt at truth.

I realized, that the life of a musician, even of a very lucky, very successful musician, wasn't really the life I wanted: I hate travel, I hate living out of suitcases, I hate the constant anxiety of being on stage.