It's not me but the world that's deranged.

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

Music always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.

You know what girls are like. They turn twenty or twenty-one and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and lovable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing.

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.

This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world.