Where the novel makes use of material from my life it does so because it's aesthetically convenient, not because of any allegiance it has to any verifiable facts.

I often say that Bernhard, W.G. Sebald, and Javier Marías are my stylistic holy trinity, prose writers who amaze me with their notation of consciousness and voice.

I studied opera, and when I left conservatory I told myself I would never sing in public again.

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 take pleasure as a reader in books that tease with a kind of urgency of the real, even if it's only a manufactured effect.

I think it's harder to avoid reflection on those larger patterns of history or society when they so insistently call into question your right to exist.

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.