As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?

But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.

Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.

You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.

I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.