One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.

My mother loved my father. From my view, she let him get away with too much. It broke my heart to see him in an old people's home and stop being strong and lose his voice.

Our thoughts, our language, are always at a distance from whatever they're trying to describe. We're dreamers and - since we only have one life, and if we screw up we can get in a world of trouble - we're very intense dreamers. That's the beauty and the terror of being human beings: We just have these symbolic languages, these dreams, and that's all it ever is. There is no American or Frenchhistory. There are all these dreams that are floating around. People construct them and fight with them and criticize them, and the world goes on. I don't think the stars pay much attention.

There's something human that has to do with time and space and being who I am that is in progress and always will be in progress. And who I am, on different days, different moments, depends on different aspects of my past.

If I had only a negative side of things to present, I think I would have much less of a drive to do it. Because what would be the point?

A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.