It is impossible to distrust one's writing without awakening a deeper distrust in oneself.

The unique thing that literature provides is to be able to step so fully into another situation and condition.

At night the sky is pure astronomy.

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 feel really strongly about not wanting to overly guide the reader about what he or she should think. I really trust the reader to know for themselves and not to need too much. You have your own imagination, your own experiences, your own feelings, and a novel wants ultimately to ask questions. It doesn't assert anything, or shouldn't, I think.

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

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.