“The novel I am constantly writing is always the same one, and it might be described as a variously sliced-up or torn-apart book of myself.”

“Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic.”

“The writer's job is not to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here I am,” but to write a novel, hold it up and say, “Here YOU are.”

“Whenever anyone declares having read a book of mine I am disappointed by the error. That’s because my books are not to be read in the sense usually called reading: the only way it seems to me to approach the novels that I write is to catch them in the same manner that one catches an illness.”

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. Those seem to be the two choices. Everything else is just killing time.”

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. Those seem to be the two choices. Everything else is just killing time.”