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.

We live in a time when writers do not always have barriers around them

It just happened. As though a moment comes when it's both necessary and natural to make a decision that has long since been made.

We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.

For 30 years I have tried to make it understood that there are no criminals.

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