After a while, if you're a writer, you want to start appearing in the bookstores of the place you're living in.

I like dialogue in novels. I wanted to avoid laying history on with a trowel - appearing to be lecturing, as opposed to the characters lecturing their children or students. Dialogue can humanise the story and make it go down somewhat more smoothly.

I'll be happy if I can gain even the smallest place inside the literary imagination of U.S. readers.

A sponge has that much absorbent capability and after a while you can pour water over it and nothing stays.

I'm a Taurus, which sounds like the name of a pickup truck. I'd prefer to be born under the sign of the rock wallaby. If you're going to interpret your life pursuant to an utterly irrational dogma, why can't it have a cute mascot? Rock wallabies really are fabulous animals, and in any remotely just world, they would have their own star sign.

Combine a left-leaning upbringing with a family with direct experience of the Holocaust and someone with aspirations to write and I guess, sooner or later, that person will have a stab at writing something about the Holocaust.