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

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.

And Boucard desisted, probably because like everyone else he was deeply impressed by this man who had laid all ghosts, who had lost all shadows, and who stared you in the eyes with cold serenity.

The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.

I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men.

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

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