We who curate our Twitter feeds and Facebook walls understand that at least part of what we're doing publicly, 'like'-ing what we like, is trying to separate ourselves from the herd.

When I get online, there's this cycle of anxiety and narcissism that takes over, which is the part of me that I like the least.

I'm trying to focus on my job as I see it, which is to write the next thing and to remain, to the degree that I ever was, a noticer.

I had one week in the fall of 1996 where I was like, 'I'm America's greatest living teenage poet.'

The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout.

I came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai.