Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.

Somehow writing has always seemed to me to have an element of performance.

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, parodoxically, the denial of time.

When I'm working on a book, I constantly retype my own sentences. Every day I go back to page one and just retype what I have. It gets me into a rhythm.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

It's just a deep pleasure to read something you've written yourself - if and when you like it.