Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.

perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.

When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.

Most American writers don't get asked their opinion on current affairs, whereas in Europe and England, we still do. There are writers here who are the most sophisticated commentators, but they're not asked. Like Don DeLillo, who sort of forecast most of the modern world before it happened.