The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.

Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

I like talking to myself and making patterns out of the letters of the alphabet on blank surfaces.

It may not seem that way, but I am an absolute optimist, an unrepentant optimist.

Even if we want to eradicate our ghosts, our dead, our murdered, even if you erase a name and the record of the existence of a person, somebody remembers.

I am indebted to anyone who has ever written anything. I am indebted to the unknown carver of pictograms on a gallery of stone panels, which I encountered and stood in silence before on top of a distant odd-shaped hill in northern Kenya. For whatever reason the muses have most unexpectedly invited me to join this immense procession. I am humbled and delighted.