Characters simply come and find me. They sit down, I offer them a coffee. They tell me their story and then they almost always leave. When a character, after drinking some coffee and briefly telling her story, wants dinner and then a place to sleep and then breakfast and so on, for me the time has come to write the novel.

Adults don't know how to respect and really love their young ones. Often love is confused with possession. You say "this is my" about your child, without taking into account that you're dealing with a real person with his/her own personality, rights, and autonomy, even when very young.

Something struck me in Africa, in black Africa, where polygamy is legal: the solitary woman is the rule there, from at an extremely young age, and the children are always the mother's responsibility.

I also really loved the sea when I was young, when I lived in Sicily, but unfortunately the sea here has been reduced to a trash dump. It's a horrible pain going to the beach; you risk getting an infection or getting tar all over you.

One writes what one lives, even if not in a literal way. Someone who has gone through an unhappy love tends to describe unhappy loves, even if they have nothing to do with their own.

In a novel there's not much autobiography. There are characters in transit. Naturally, I can project something of my experiences onto the characters, but they have their own autonomy, a personality that is often a mystery to me.

A writer is first and foremost a witness of her time. She must tell the truth, not take a political position. But then the truth that she discovers is profoundly political.