I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

For me, what I am making in the novel is a place to live. When I first switched from poetry to novels, I was asked why, and the metaphor I came up with was about poems as rooms. You can make a room perfect, but then you have to shut the door and never go back, whereas a novel is like a house - it can never be perfect, but you can make a life in it.

... as a rule of thumb, whenever there appears a plural, correct for a singular. Should I ever let slip a royal WE, put me out of my misery with a swift blow to the head.

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations.

If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms - i you find yourself at a loss for what do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignnes of your own body - it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less.

there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.

In the beginning it was always the same. But. I kept trying. Then one day I accidentally moved as the shutter clicked. A shadow appeared. The next time I saw the outline of my face, and a few weeks later my face itself. It was the opposite of disappearing.