There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?

I'm not at all interested in the brave who fight against the odds and win. I am interested in those who accept their lot, as that is what many people in the world are doing. They do their best in ghastly conditions.

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

I'm more interested in having a place to work out my voice and my body than I am in having furniture.

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

Now when I look back to the Guildford of that time, it seems far more exotic to me than Nagasaki.