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Literature has as one of its principal allures that it tells you something about life that life itself can't tell you. I just thought literature is a thing that human beings do.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience.

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

The thing about literature is that, yes, there are kind of tides of fashion, you know; people come in and out of fashion; writers who are very celebrated fall into, you know, people you know stop reading them, and then it comes back again.

Literature at its fullest takes human nature as its theme. That's the kind of writing that interests me.

Literature is the question minus the answer.