The language of an artist, as Montale said, is ‘a language that is historicized, that has a relationship. It is valid in as much as it opposes, or differs from, other languages.’ How would you describe the identity of your language from this perspective?

This question ought to be turned back to you critics. I can only say that I try to counteract the mental laziness that is in evidence in the works of so many of my fellow-novelists in their use of a language that is as predictable and insipid as can be. I believe that prose requires an investment of all one’s verbal resources, just as poetry does: a spark and precision in the choice of words, economy and significance and inventiveness in their distribution and strategy, élan and mobility and tension in the sentence, and agility and ductility in shifting from one register to another, from one rhythm to another. For instance, writers who use too obvious or redundant adjectives or ones that are only there for an effect which they would be unable to achieve otherwise, can be considered in some cases as naïve, and in others as dishonest: in either case they are never people you can trust.