When the word 'nostalgia' was coined in the 18th century, it was used to describe a pathology - not so much a sense of lost time, but a severe homesickness.

What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: an endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation.

In one's youth, one has tremendous access to one's feelings. And as one gets older, some of those feelings kind of drift away. But so much more happens to you. There's more at stake in life.

Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.

The price we paid for the volumes of ourselves that we suffocated in the dark.

At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.

I think a lot of the questions - questioning reality and the self and the desire to change, to me are always at the heart of life. No matter how old you are, to me life is always about changing and growing and discovering and that's not always easy.