At home, I dedicate occasional whole days to reading as if I’m a convalescent. The ideal place for this is the bath, where the body floats free. Books go a little wavy, but they’re mine, so who cares.

I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.

I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.

I think any time you deal with humans and the way they exploit one another and cause pain you are in the realm of politics, on some level.

Violence, factory politics - these things simply form some bedrock of what interests me, but I'm a child of the twentieth century. And I don't see reality and its violence, wars, oppression, etc., and fiction as counterposed.

I like to think each writer is doing his or her part. Feeding the lake, as Jean Rhys said. And maybe there are different lakes.

I'm a very interior person. I love silence. I revel in it. I'm happy that way.