...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.

Madmen always think it's the others who are mad.

If people thought a quarter of what they speak, this world would be heaven.

Coincidences are the scars of fate.

Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives.

Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.

I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do.