I'm in constant inner dialogue with my father still.

The joke is the purest, most essential form of storytelling. Every word has to count.

No one can cross the boundary into another -- for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself

but even the facts do not always tell the truth

Writing is, after all, a gesture towards other people, giving something to others. And so it's not a completely hermetic exercise. It's really an opening up.

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

I guess of all those novels, Don DeLillo's Falling Man is the one I like the best. I thought there were some beautiful things in that, particularly the relationship between the man who finds the briefcase and the woman whose husband owned the briefcase. It's quite a beautiful passage.