I know that the fantastic amount of profit that people want to make on anything is damaging. And that none of us seem able to resist it.

in the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound, than their actions in life, and no structure of concrete or stone can contain them.

The truth we have to face about the world we live in is that it's driven by profit, and contradictions and doubts are not profitable. They yield wisdom, but wisdom is not profitable. I find pleasure in doubt, but let's face it, my pleasure is not very profitable. To me, the truth is that things mean many things at once, and all of them opposed to each other, and all of them true.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.

But you know, where did the Brontes go to college? Where did George Eliot go to college? Where did Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington go? Did George Washington go to college? This idea which we now have that people ought to have these credentials is really ridiculous. Where did Homer go to college?

I've written a book about my mother, and I don't remember anyone going to Antigua or calling up my mother and verifying her life. There is something about this book that drives people mad with the autobiographical question.