“Sometimes a gentle lie was enough to remove the weight of a harsh truth”

“I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.”

“No. Harsh truth was better than comfortable lies. It had to be.”

“A lie carries a weight that is exponentially higher than the truth. It’s weight will retard growth directly in proportion to the area lied.”

“Removing a pebble is sometimes enough to change a destiny.”

“My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them. ”