I was always totally convinced that three weeks after the revolution they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.

I was exactly having fun. I was stone miserable, but I wasn't hating doing it; I was loving doing it, but it's just damaged and warped.

You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.

I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.

We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.

Every invention eventually becomes obsolete.