I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

I meet a number of people as a writer of fiction who say "Oh, I don't read much fiction," as if the history of the United States, just as an example, isn't an exercise in storytelling and myth-making.

I love Canada. Its a wonderful political act of faith that exists atop a breathtakingly beautiful land.

The planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it's like to be a woman doesn't strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.

In art, something comes of nothing. Out of the thin air and the ether, you create a story. And that is intensely satisfying.

I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.

Most of us get our history through story.