We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

I met Peter Brook, the theater director, who's been based in Paris for many years at the Bouffes du Nord. I admire him tremendously. Some years ago, he was in New York, and he gave an interview with The Times, and what he said was this: "In my work, I try to capture the closeness of the everyday and the distance of myth. Because, without the closeness, you can't be moved, and without the distance, you can't be amazed." Isn't that extraordinary?

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 had made an empirical discovery and it carried all the weight of a mathematical proof.

I feel I'm discovering something new, a different rhythm, and I guess these rhythms have a lot to do with walking, too, but it's a longer trajectory now. I'm traveling greater distances with each sentence. But I don't write about walking that much anymore.

Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing.

There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.