I was read to as a small child, I read on my own as soon as I could, and I recall being more or less overwhelmed again and again - if not by what the books actually said, by what they suggested, what they helped me to imagine.

I like a book to be full of the memory of what it is, a voice in an endless conversation, and yet at the same time to be new.

And often enough, when we think we are protecting ourselves, we are struggling against our rescuer.

We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.

When we did not move or speak, there was no proof that we were there at all.

I did go through graduate school and I like to do research, to create something that has a certain objective solidity. The same thing influences my fiction to some degree, because, you know, my fiction is often based on history that I've read.