Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight.

There are some writers who feel they are elected by God. I am not. I am elected by the devil - this is clear.

We Latins are known for jabbering on.

Always in all my books I'm trying to reveal or help to reveal the hidden greatness of the small, of the little, of the unknown - and the pettiness of the big.

Almost all wars, perhaps all, are trade wars connected with some material interest. They are always disguised as sacred wars, made in the name of God, or civilization or progress. But all of them, or almost all of the wars, have been trade wars.

Reality is very, very contradictory, and so I try to write just perfecting what I see, what I read, what I feel, in a feel-thinking way. Not only giving ideas, or receiving ideas, or trying to explain something, but mainly feel-thinking, a feel-thinking language able to tie the heart and the mind, which have been divorced.

Globalization has considerably accelerated in recent years following the dizzying expansion of communications and transport and the equally stupefying transnational mergers of capital. We must not confuse globalization with "internationalism" though. We know that the human condition is universal, that we share similar passions, fears, needs and dreams, but this has nothing to do with the "rubbing out" of national borders as a result of unrestricted capital movements. One thing is the free movement of peoples, the other of money.