At one point I felt a tension between objects, their real, physical lives, and the idea of meaning: the physical, material reality of a book, and the totally intangible experience of reading it.

Identity is gradual, cumulative because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light. But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested? In the darkness or the twinkle?

I don't read novels that are looking to convince me of anything. I believe that literature needs to be a machine of illusions.

Novels with a thesis don't interest me. They just don't - novels that want to show something, that want to argue something specific. I don't read novels that are looking to convince me of anything.