When a translator translates my book, it is no longer just my book. It is the translator's book, too. So the book in another language is almost the work of two people. And that is quite interesting to me.

Kamby Bolongo Mean River is an original and fearless fiction. It bears genetic traces of Beckett and Stein, but Robert Lopez's powerful cadences and bleak, joyful wit are all his own.

When you work at home, fellow alums, discipline is the supreme virtue. Suicidal self-loathing lurks behind every coffee break. Activities must be expertly scheduled, from shopping to showers to panic attacks.

People gave names to things so they could tell stories about them, goddam fairy tales about children who got out alive.

You think you know yourself, the world. You believe you've got a bead on everybody else's bullshit, but what about your own?

Everything's weird if you stare at it.

Dept. of Speculation is gorgeous, funny, a profound and profoundly moving work of art. Jenny Offill is a master of form and feeling, and she gets life on the page in new, startling ways.