What Interests Me Is The Surprising Enormous

Throughout My Career I've Struggled To Encourage People To Read My Books On A More Metaphorical Level. I'm Less Attached To My Settings Than, For Example, Saul Bellow. The Setting Of A Novel For Me Is Just A Part Of The Technique. I Choose It At The End.

The Book Was At A Reasonably High Position On The New York Times... Before I Was In The Country. I Thought It Would Be An Interesting Experiment To See If My Presence Here Would Push It Up Or Down.

I Started As A Songwriter And Wanted To Be Like Leonard Cohen. I've Always Seen My Stories As Enlarged Songs.

I Want My Words To Survive Translation. I Know When I Write A Book Now I Will Have To Go And Spend Three Days Being Intensely Interrogated By Journalists In Denmark Or Wherever. That Fact, I Believe, Informs The Way I Write - With Those Danish Journalists Leaning Over My Shoulder.

All You Decent, Well-meaning Gentlemen, Let Me Ask You, Have You Any Idea What Sort Of Place The World Is Becoming All Around You? The Days When You Could Act Out Of Your Noble Instincts Are Over. Except Of Course, You Here In Europe Don't Yet Seem To Know It.