I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

I was never a man of great ambition I cried too easily I didn't have a head for science Words often failed me While others prayed I only moved my lips

Wittgenstein once wrote that when the eye sees something beautiful, the hand wants to draw it. I wish I could draw you.

Only now that my son was gone did I realize how much I'd been living for him. When I woke up in the morning it was because he existed, and when I ordered food it was because he existed, and when I wrote my book it was because he existed to read it.

Now that mine is almost over, I can say that the one thing that struck me most about life is the capacity for change. One day you're a person and the next day they tell you you're a dog. At first it's hard to bear, but after a while you learn not to look at it as a loss. There's even a moment when it becomes exhilarating to realize just how little needs to stay the same for you to continue the effort they call, for lack of a better word, being human.