When I think of Tokyo Story, yeah, it is like a novella. That doesn't mean it's not great. Some of my favorite Tolstoy works are his novellas.

Holes in the memory. You grab on to some things, others have completely disappeared.

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

Money is the driving force of Hand to Mouth, the lack of money, and all those true stories about strange things in The Red Notebook, coincidences and unlikely events, surprise, the unexpected.

[Lev] Tolstoy is not a boy-writer. He's a grown-up. And [Fedor] Doestoeivski is not a boy-writer.

All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.

We're outsiders, and so when we walk through the city, we're there and not there at the same time, participating and observing simultaneously.