It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.

I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.

His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.

I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.

I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn't stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn't notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there.

I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.

Truth is, only the useless get to the top in this country.