What I notice or discover has to grow in my mind. I always wait until the ideas and impulses are so strong that they invade my mind and I have to pursue them.

That's it. Mostly. Really, the people and the issues all come together in a sort of clump or knot, and writing the story is untying, unwinding the knot.

I have talkative friends. The core of my friendships are curious people. We talk about life. "What do you think of this? Why do people do that? What do you think is the underlying motivation behind the reason that people do this thing?" Just constantly analyzing life.

Just circumstance. I was running a small theatre group and somebody didn’t deliver a play.

I never know who I am.

The good part of aging is that you read more and more. You discover poets you never heard of when you were younger.

The good part of aging is that you read more and more. You discover poets you never heard of when you were younger.

Well, in a certain sense, the decision that I was the one who was going to be writing was already formed when I was 12 years old when I was spending those winter evenings reading Verne and other authors; I thought then that books were the best thing in the world. That this was something I wanted to do.

This is a French expression, silence radio, which is used in the navy, for example—when you cannot use the radio because the enemy is near. It’s not an expression I use regularly; I used it once, maybe, to describe my period of inner silence, which mostly happens when I’m back home, coming from Houston. The long weeks or months of silence. So it’s the opposite of inspiration; it’s the time of doing other things. Waiting.

Happiness springs from having found a form of expression that also earns recognition.