It was night and I could see a large and calm lake, reflecting the moon. Black mountains rose around it. I arrived from between two of these mountains, I looked at the lake and the moon, and that was it, nothing else happened.

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters—I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world.

If your vision of the world is of a certain kind you will put poetry in everything, necessarily.

Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person.

A novelist is a man who doesn't like his mother.

I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong.

I'm a bit like a sponge. When I'm not writing I absorb life like water. When I write I squeeze the sponge a little - and out comes, not water but ink.