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When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not...more

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Doesn't seem quite real. It's not meaningful. I can't quite imagine myself being 73. That's the age my father was! [Laughter.] How can I be his age? I...more

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It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel i...more

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Too young for Korea, too old for Vietnam.

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It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, ...more

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Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.

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I drove all night, northeast, and once again I felt it was literature I had been confronting these past days, the archetypes of the dismal mystery, so...more

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Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There’s an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away all the surfaces, when y...more

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People get bitten. But I won't.' I found myself saying, 'You will, you will. These snakes don't know you find death inconceivable. They don't know you...more