'He appeared like a man who no longer perceived life and nature around him as decorative curtains, but who was trying to break through this curtain, to tear it, to peek behind.'
'If From Life leaves the reader a little in the dark about what Berger was really like, though, this is not entirely Overton’s fault. Berger was, it seems, difficult to know.'
'I have no interest in writing a campus novel. I have no interest in writing a New York novel, a Berlin novel. There are things that keep getting published, and I wonder how, because they feel a little bit played out.'
'I don’t think you can write a book that is only about love, or only about disaster, or only about grief, because I don’t think that would be true to the way things actually appear in our daily lives.'