My grandfather and I were very close.

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.

The best fiction stays with you and changes you.

A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

Come on, is your heart a sponge or a fist?

We're all entitled to our superstitions.

My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they're gone we're left with the concept, but not the true memory.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

I think the mythology of death really ran away with me when I was very young.

We live in wonder, blaze in a cycle of passion and apprehension.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Only when a tree has fallen can you take the measure of it. It is the same with a man.

I'd just like to be treated like a regular customer.

When you really put your heart in the work, you don't think of how you look. And I think that's the beauty of it.

We need to develop people rather than process them.

You are always and forever in the moment of pure creation. So create who and what you are, and then experience that.

The locker room talk is always that about who can beat who.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment.