Writers, because they write, are condemned never to be readers of their own stories...The memory of first putting a story into words will always prevent writers from reading their work as an ordinary reader would.

The fictional treatment of biographical material - a treatment that for me is essential - is full of traps.

I don't have any special passion for politics, it being a never-ending merry-go-round of bosses big and small, all generally mediocre. I actually find it boring.

He was going through one of those moments that you read about in books, when a character reacts in an unexpectedly extreme way to the normal discontents of living.

Elena Ferrante is the author of several novels. There is nothing mysterious about her, given how she manifests herself - perhaps even too much - in her own writing, the place where her creative life transpires in absolute fullness.

I think our sexuality is all yet to be recounted and that the rich male literary tradition constitutes a huge obstacle.

Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.