In my 30s I used to go to the gym even though I hated it. The purpose of going to the gym was to postpone the day when I would stop going. That's what writing is to me: a way of postponing the day when I won't do it any more, the day when I will sink into a depression so profound it will be indistinguishable from perfect bliss.

If Donald Trump thinks that just by being unpredictable that somehow he can have an impact, but not necessarily commit himself to certain things, that's not the way it is going to be read in foreign capitals. Foreign governments are going to take these things very literally and very directly.

If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.' At first there can be a friction between our expectations of time and Tarkovsky-time and this friction is increasing in the twenty-first century as we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time towards moron-time in which nothing can last—and no one can concentrate on anything—for longer than about two seconds.

It's this thing that's going on all the time - aging. Paul Auster quotes the poet George Opren on growing old: "What a strange thing to happen to a little boy." Which I think is so profound.

I always hope to come up with a style of writing that's appropriate to the material and I felt like this was. And then there's plenty of - I don't know if it's the right word but - lampooning, but it's always at my expense.

I published so many books, which, for years, didn't get published here in America, at all - and which barely got any attention in England. So it wasn't going to take much to make me feel suddenly famous. So - yeah - after 20 years, I'm an overnight success.

Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.