—¿Adónde vamos' —pregunté.—No lo sé—dijo—. Simplemente damos una vuelta en coche.—pero esta carretera no lleva a ninguna parte—le dije.—No importa.—¿Y qué es lo que importa? —le pregunté al cabo de un rato.—Solo que estamos en ella, tío —dijo.

Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting, provocative and important European novelist of my generation. Period. No one else comes close. He has written two or maybe three great books, and his latest, The Map and the Territory, is one of them.

Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time.

It's the rare book that's able to transport you in a way that a movie does.

I think my sensibility is very literary; all my books were built as books, and I wasn't thinking about them being movies.

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

So…” Kimball looks at his book helplessly. “There’s nothing you can tell me about Paul Owen?” “Well.” I sigh. “He led what I suppose was an orderly life, I guess. “ Really stumped, I offer, “He...ate a balanced diet.

I think the books are the books. They were conceived as books. They weren't conceived as movies. When I write scripts, that's an idea and a situation that I think is a really good idea for a movie. When I'm writing a book, I'm not thinking, "Oh, this would be a great movie." This would be a very interesting book. And I think the books are things that cannot really be adapted into another medium.