I don't feel I have to struggle against allegory. I let the readers do the interpreting.

I don't pare down much. I write the beginning of a story in a notebook and it comes out very close to what it will be in the end. There is not much deliberateness about it.

I think a lot of what goes into writing can be taught - not mixing metaphors, etc.

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 am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.

I think the close work I do as a translator pays off in my writing - I'm always searching for multiple ways to say things.

I looked like a woman in glasses, but I had dreams of leading a very different kind of life, the life of a woman who would not wear glasses, the kind of woman I saw from a distance now and then in a bar.