Not all possibilities are open to us. The world is finite; our hopes spill over its rim.

The field of the novel is very rich. If you're a composer, you're well aware of the history of composition, and you are trying to make your music part of that history. You're not ahistorical. In the same way, I think, if you write now, you are writing in the historical context of what the novel has been and what possibilities it has revealed.

In the end, the thing that's important about free expression is that it's the right from which all other rights are derived. If you can't articulate ideas and if you can't articulate critiques of other peoples' ideas, then you're powerless. What always increases the power of an authoritarian regime is whether it can successfully prevent people from expressing themselves.

One either loves, or waits for love, or banishes love for good. That is the full range of possible choices.

The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.

Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible.

When people use the term magic realism, usually they only mean 'magic' and they don't hear 'realism', whereas the way in which magic realism actually works is for the magic to be rooted in the real. It's both things. It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real.