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All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.

Writing is a marvelous adventure and very labor-intensive: those words run away and try to escape. They are very difficult to capture.

Creating the characters is the most creative part of the novel except for the language itself. There I am, sitting in front of my computer in right-brain mode, typing the things that come to mind - which become the seeds of plot. It's scary, though, because I always wonder: Is it going to be there this time?

The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

If a translation doesn't have obvious writing problems, it may seem quite all right at first glance. We readers, after all, quickly adapt to the style of a translator, stop noticing it, and get caught up in the story.