“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.”

“Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.”

“What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us wha...”

“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.”

“The creative act is not pure.”

“You can't change a regime on the basis of compassion. There's got to be something harder.”

“Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you.”

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: youre falling to the floor crying ...”

“Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.”

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

“What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.”

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story.”