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'Ulysses' is like a big box of tricks that you can dive into. Each time you read it, you find something new.

Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

The well-known inspiration for 'Ulysses' is made clear by the title itself: Joyce's novel is based on Homer's 'Odyssey', under the ever-fascinating premise that all of Odysseus' extraordinary adventures can be experienced by a modern man in a single day, provided that the writing consists of his mental activity.

I read The Odyssey all the time. I always get something out of it.

As society diversifies, the number of people who read literature is decreasing. It will be difficult for readers to digest my ideas through literature.

My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

I read a lot. I am an inveterate reader. I always have a novel going.