There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life's surprising unfolding.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

What does it mean to be born? After we die, will it be the same thing as it was before we were born? Or a different kind of nothingness? Because there might be knowledge then. Memory.