There are many things I’ve written that I didn’t really understand until a long time later.

Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.

You make something. You give up expressing and start inventing.

My idea was to go to Vienna to study conducting and perhaps play in an orchestra first, so I thought before I got to Vienna I could do with a little training in Paris.

I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches.

I think situations are more important than plot and character.

It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.