I think the Americans are dying to leave Iraq. I was against the war but longed for the fall of Saddam; the decision to go to war clearly was taken long before the matter reached the U.N., given its inevitability. I kept my fingers crossed for the emergence of democracy in Iraq even if that would mean victory for a man whose politics I have little sympathy with.

The moment you lose curiosity in the world, you might as well be dead.

What can it be about low temperatures that sharpens the edges of objects?

You can spin stories out of the ways people understand and misunderstand each other.

I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction. It is the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated ill-shaven giant (but a giant who's a genius on his best days).

Writers are said to have superstitions and little rituals. Readers have them too.

But how to do feelings? All very well to write "She felt sad", or describe what a sad person might do, but what of sadness itself, how was that put across so it could be felt in all its lowering immediacy? Even harder was the threat, or the confusion of feeling contradictory things.