The desire to live in our imagination is driven by this suspicion that we're disembodied sensibilities cobbled into our bodies. That idea has infused most of human thought since the very beginning.

Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.

The loneliness of writing is that you baffle your friends and change the lives of strangers.

Everything interests me.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.

Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.

For me, university was just awful because it was closing one door after the other of all these candy shops of professional possibilities.