Only sometimes you can't feel anything about a subject without hypothesizing its extinction.

Any rainy summer morning, of course, has the seeds of gloomy alienation sown in. But a rainy summer morning far from home - when your personal clouds don't move but hang - can easily produce the feeling of the world as seen from the grave. This I know.

My father died in my arms. That's tumult. That's everything exploding.

For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?

The thing about being a writer is that you never have to ask, 'Am I doing something that's worthwhile?' Because even if you fail at it, you know that it's worth doing.

I didn't read a serious book until I was 19.

Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.