He lost himself in the words and images conjured in his mind and for a while forgot ... He found himself flying among stars and planets.

It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors'. I tend to think we are what we remember, what we know. The less we remember, the less we know about ourselves, the less we are. (Interview with Three Monkeys Online, October 2008)

Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.

Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.