My beautiful wife is dead. She meant everything to me. Her laughter, her tears and her joy will remain with me the rest of my life.

Writing an acceptance speech gives you the expectation of winning, and you are therefore devastated or hurt if you didn't win.

If there's anything I'm not pompous about, it's myself or my work. But I seem to be able to play it.

What part of me was born with the courage to stand in front of strangers and risk rejection?

Montreal is a very cosmopolitan, sophisticated, erudite, educated, glorious city today. But it wasn't quite that way when I was growing up there. There was a lot of anti-Semitism. And I had to deal with that in an area of the city that had very few Jews.

I love to evoke the bones and meat and thoughts of characters.

My dad died of a stroke.