There is no one 'best set-up', there are many - you can get to mate in endless ways. And - don't forget! - in chess, like in literature, "the other" (the reader, the adversary, the partner, etc.) has to be a collaborator, has to work with you to get to the final goal. We depend on them! But they also depend on us.

For me, literature is the daughter of music: a bit heavy and more level headed than its mother. Literature submits to the same principles of successive perception, which allows it to build progressively.

The literary game is the abyss of human society itself: interactive, playful and tragic. We can't live alone. For me, Robinson [Crusoe] is either a false myth or else he represents the denial of human society. We can't play by ourselves. In literature, it's even more complicated, because one has to play with an indeterminate number of players simultaneously and every game is different. The other player can abandon your game at any time...to go play chess.

Chess hasn't really influenced my literature. It's true, there's a character in Pigeon Post, an old chess player; but it's more of a wink, a self-portrait and not much more.

It's not the subject of narration that interests me, but the structure. That's why I stay in touch with my old works, which I reread regularly. I don't hesitate to take up previously used images or even whole scenes.

Many images of animals, mammals or birds, resurface regularly in my narratives. They are not symbols, but chromatic benchmarks. For me, music has always been the perfect construction - an inaccessible ideal.

But music doesn't sum up my approach to literature - even in Vain Art of the Fugue. To 'fugue' I had to invent 'trap-words,' or words that would force the narrator to turn around and start his path anew.