It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.

Short stories can be rather stark and bare unless you put in the right details. Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

We do not wish to be better than we are, but more fully what we are.

On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.

It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?

It's very important to feel foreign. I was born in England, but when I'm being a writer, everyone in England is foreign to me.