Once you have been in an earthquake you know, even if you survive without a scratch, that like a stroke in the heart, it remains in the earth's breast, horribly potential, always promising to return, to hit you again, with an even more devastating force.

Such is the miraculous nature of the future of exiles: what is first uttered in the impotence of an overheated apartment becomes the fate of nations.

When you're writing for the screen you're really thinking all the time of what you have to do to make sure that they have the information that they need, that the emotional thread is not snapped, that the story moves at the right speed, to keep the audience hopefully sitting on the edge of their seats or else weeping or laughing.

American literature has always been immigrant.

I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.

Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.

I seem to have fallen for women with missing parents. Goodness knows what it signifies.