Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I'm looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

I need, therefore I imagine.

Culture consists of connections, not of separations: to specialize is to isolate.

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

The new world economic order is not an exercise in philanthropy, but in enlightened self-interest for everyone concerned.