The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.

A l'intérieur de ce corps vivait l'âme d'une intellectuelle et poète dont personne n'avait le soupçon. Within this body lived the soul of an intellectual and poet, which nobody had suspected.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.