I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].

I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

If all the students who slept through lectures were laid end to end, they'd all be a lot more comfortable. If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

We don't act the same in every situation. Things bleed into all kinds of other things, from behavior to identity.

I had a student once come up to me and we were talking about this incident, and, of course, I never had the right thing to say. But later on, I realized I should have said: Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

Why are the mainstream buzz things rarely contemporary? It doesn't happen very often. It's hard to feel culpable or implicated or even apathetic.

My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.