Samuel Johnson Is Indignant:that Scotland has so few trees.

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.

There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious - in the abstract, anyway.

Art is not in some far-off place.

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.

To be simple, I would say a story has to have a bit of narrative, if only "she says," and then enough of a creation of a different time and place to transport the reader.