As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

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.