There are moments when you feel trapped, ill at ease. A year later the same feeling can turn out to be the theme of a book.

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the "fronts" people assume before one another's eyes, and the "front" a writer puts on the face of reality.

If you don't have imagination you're lost. But it's a virtue that's becoming increasingly rare, especially in its higher form: spontaneity. Mad, happy spontaneity.

Jazz music is an intensified feeling of nonchalance.

Illness is the opposite of freedom. It makes everything impossible.