The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

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

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

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.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.