Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the other, that the writer has followed a recipe, a kind of secret set of rules that they would like to see revealed. There is no set of rules, or, rather, there are many, varied and flexible rules.

I don't see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs.

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny.

There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.

To survive, you must tell stories.