To me, music is a river. I have lived my life beside the river. Every day, I get up and look at the river. I watch it and notice when it rises and falls.

When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.

I really only take roles that I love and that I have some kind of innate compulsion or need to tell that story. Although it's almost like I have no control over it. It's like they choose me.