I write different kinds of sentences, depending on what the book is, and what the project is. I see my work evolving. I'm writing long sentences now, something I didn't use to do. I had some kind of breakthrough, five or six years ago, in Invisible, and in Sunset Park after that. I discovered a new way to write sentences. And I find it exhilarating.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.

It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.

Books demand more. You have to be a more active participant.

Life is deeply tragic and also very comic at the same time. It's everything at once.

What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes.

Most of my friends' fathers had been in the war - either as soldiers or in some other capacity in the military. Whereas my father had not fought. He was older and he was in a business that was considered essential to the wartime effort - the wire business - and, of course, I was so young I didn't understand any of this.