There are people whose external reality is generous because it is transparent, because you can read everything, accept everything, understand everything about them: people who carry their own sun with them.

Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.

By its very nature, the novel indicates that we are becoming. There is no final solution. There is no last word.

Anything would be better in the US than what you have. As a government it's really very low quality, given the fact that this country produces eminent intellectuals, has great universities, and then the people who arrive in government are very mediocre. The Latin American situation has been very different in the first place, because writers have spoken for those who have no voice. The rate of illiteracy, poverty, joblessness in Latin America has been so great throughout our history that if the writers didn't speak out for the people, nobody would.

Reading, writing, teaching, learning, are all activities aimed at introducing civilizations to each other.

The contract between the author and the reader is a game. And the game . . . is one of the greatest invetions of Western civilization: the game of telling stories, inventing characters, and creating the imaginary paradise of the individual, from whence no one can be expelled because, in a novel, no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be heard and understood.

The possibility of being as free with the camera as we are with the pen is a fantastic prospect for the creative life of the 21st century.