Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.

Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.

The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.

Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.

It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.