You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.

I never would have thought of that word, "hospitality." I settle into the rhythm of my steps.

The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

I am very scared at the beginning of each book, because I've never written it before. I feel I have to teach myself how to do it.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

Money, of course, is never just money. It's always something else, and it's always something more, and it always has the last word.