One should never underestimate the power of books.

I've found that writing novels is an all-absorbing experience - both physical and mental - and I have to do it every day in order to keep the rhythm, to keep myself focused on what I'm doing.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are, it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.

I use things, I steal things from my life when I want to, when I need to, or when it seems appropriate. But most of the stuff in my novels is entirely invented, ninety-five percent. And even when I do borrow something, it becomes fictionalized.

We find ourselves only by looking to what we’re not.

I don't like that word [memoir]. Whenever my publishers have wanted to use it, I've told them to take it away.