I'm very interested in structure, how multiple stories are assembled in different ways; that is what memory does as well.

All my life I have arrived early only to find myself standing self-consciously on a corner, outside a door, in an empty room, but the closer I get to death the earlier I arrive, the longer I am content to wait, perhaps to give myself the false sensation that there is too much time rather than not enough.

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

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

I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.

A couple months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I'd given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn't matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones.

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