For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.

The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.

When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.

She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.

I guess I've always written more from the opposite perspective, that kind of existentialist perspective which argues that existence precedes essence. And there really isn't anything essential in there - you're the product of your actions, which can always change. And they retrospectively make you one way or another.

I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.