There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.

I am curious about grownups, not children.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

All my life I've been hiding.

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.