The path to survival was to never give up on the small things.

When forging money, I had always salved my conscience by concluding that I was merely extending the lie of commerce.

I think empathy's a terrible danger for a writer.

One cannot distinguish between human and non-human acts. One cannot point, one cannot say this man here is a man and that man there is a devil.

I think sometimes writers must attempt to communicate the incommunicable, because, whether they wish it or not, they're the ones to whom it falls.

You have to attempt to find new forms that will force you to write freshly and better and hopefully more truthfully.

Most of us have loved. And the terror for a writer is that readers will forgive you so much, but they won't forgive you one false note about love, about which they too are expert.