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.

The style developed over decades, really, but I started out writing pretty traditional stories, then became impatient. It was a writer named Russell Edson who showed me that one could write in any way at all.

I would recommend, definitely, developing a 'day job' that you like - don't expect to make money writing!

I never dream in French, but certain French words seem better or more fun than English words - like 'pois chiches' for chick peas!

Art is not in some far-off place.

I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary.

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.