It is terribly important to maintain a national identity in a way that it probably wasn't before.

I think it is an important question of our lives - what is the meaning of literature to us as humans.

Despite the war, and bombings, and all the big things that happen to us, the stuff of our lives is small and always will be. During a war it is different, but even then, it is perfectly possible to write novels during a major war, which are about those thing which endure. It is what makes us human and the thing which is going to keep going.

One has to choose a word in English. If you want to be eligible for a literary prize you have to designate it as something.

You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

[Anton] Chekhov is the most produced playwright in the world after Shakespeare, and most of the people in my sort of audience would have seen at least one of his plays.

I think that in this globalised world, the local is going to become more and more important - it is a paradox. You see it in Western Europe more and more. Eastern Europe is still coming out of the Soviet uniform cultural era, but this kind of separation and nationalism is very obvious now in Western Europe.