I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.

We're all united in this, that every human being migrates through time, that the place we grew up in in our childhood is gone when we're in our 50s and 60s and 70s.

I think writing is a very political act. I think that any writer who says it's not, is simply a writer who is disavowing the political connotations of what they write.

And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.

Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.

My dad had this outlook: It doesn't matter what I want to read - reading was a good thing. So whatever I was curious about they'd get for me from the library. Books were a kind of a resistance to reality. I liked to imagine worlds that were different. I still do.