To leave a book is like leaving the better part of oneself.

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.

The future is created through memory.

A painter's hand has a thirst for thieving, it steals from heaven and makes a gift to the memories of men, it feigns eternity and it delights in this pretence almost as if it had created rules of its own, more durable and more profoundly true.

Aging has brought me greater liberty in fiction. When I was young I was harder on myself. I wrote with an idea of absolute seriousness.

What strikes me most of all in Christian culture, which is supposed to be concerned with the rights of the weakest, is the lack of regard toward animals. Maybe because they're thought to be soulless.

I dream of continuing to dream.