I can talk for a long time only when it's about something boring.

I started with small-press publishers, who were willing to publish all sorts of forms. I didn't move to the larger presses until they knew what they were getting in for.

If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.

the translator, a lonely sort of acrobat, becomes confused in a labyrinth of paradox, or climbs a pyramid of dependent clauses and has to invent a way down from it in his own language.

I'm a fierce editor! I don't edit out things that I began by saying, usually. The editing is on the micro level - a comma here, a word there.

I am basically the sort of person who has stage-fright teaching. I kind of creep into a classroom. I'm not an anecdote-teller, either, although I often wish I were.

When I'm trying a new form- trying to do something I'm not used to doing, which was true of the novel.