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.

If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn't we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?

I can't sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat

The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.

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.

I would recognise myself in each of his translations and he would feel betrayed and annoyed whenever I didn't write something the way he would have. A part of me died with him, a part of him lives with me.

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.