Each neighborhood of the city appeared to be made of a different substance, each seemed to have a different air pressure, a different psychic weight: the bright lights and shuttered shops, the housing projects and luxury hotels, the fire escapes and city parks.

The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

I often say I've spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.

I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

It is dangerous to live in a secure world.

There's a reticence necessary when you consider the suffering of others. Into the space created by that reticence, you bring in those things that best help us confront ambiguity: music, painting, film, and so on.

But a book suggests conversation: one person is speaking to another, and audible sound is, or should be, natural to that exchange. So I read aloud with myself as the audience, and gave voice to another's words.