We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.

My disenchantment? Oh no, my dear, there are no disenchantments, merely progressions and styles of possession. To exist is to be spellbound.

What I saw quite clearly in the '80s, before the internet, was that the whole world was shifting toward digital formats, and that didn't matter whether it's movies or writing or whatever. It was something that was coming. And with the invention of the World Wide Web in the early '90s, when we were teaching our first courses, or the arrival of the internet by way of the browser, which opened up the internet to everybody - soon it was just revolutionary.

I see no reason to stop writing. But the reason isn't always one of your own. The mind is not invulnerable, and it can lose some of its powers.

Metafiction says something. It has to do with taking a large fiction itself and writing within it; that kind of self-reflecting writing that emerges from it can be thought of as metafictional.

I learned my realism from guys like Kafka.

We need myths to get by. We need story; otherwise the tremendous randomness of experience overwhelms us. Story is what penetrates.