The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.
When I was a little kid, my mother and I used to watch the Golden Globes and I would dress up and she would get sparkling apple cider and we would make a tray of hors doeuvres and watch it together. And I would get up and make a pretend speech.