If I take a less defensive tone, I'd admit that I couldn't write today a very jazzy, contemporary look at America as I did in 1979 in States of Desire.

I hate writing. I almost never write. I write against deadlines. And when I'm teaching, I'm focused on that.

The talk shows in the States want celebrities, not authors. In France, it is different; writers are called upon to comment on everything. They have a very public role there.

I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit.

A straight writer can write a gay novel and not worry about it, and a gay novelist can write about straight people.

Nobody in France would ever say 'He's a Jewish novelist' or 'She's a black novelist,' even though people do write about those subjects. It would look absurd to a French person to go into a bookstore and see a 'Gay Studies' section.