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

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

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.

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.

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

Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history.