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

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.

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

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

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

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.

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.