“A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.”

“Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life. The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.”

“This is a work of fiction.If certain characters resemble people in real life, it is because certain people in real life resemble characters from a novel.Nobody, therefore, is entitled to feel included in this book.Nobody, by the same token, to feel excluded.”

“In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations.”

“I want to tell A Story, Every Story, everything all at once, not anything in particular that might be said through the words I know, and I try to roll all sounds into one, to accumulate more and more syllables, as if they might make a Möbius strip of language in which everything, everything is contained. There is a hidden rule even in this game, though - that the sounds have to resemble real syllables, that they can't disintegrate into brute noise, for then I wouldn't be talking at all. I want articulation - but articulation that says the whole world at once.”

“When many story-tellers occupy themselves with a social world which offers no great variety of lively action, their stories will probably resemble one another as to many of the major incidents, and if they draw on these limited resources like spend thrifts such resemblances will be inevitable--and therefore not significant.”