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

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.

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.

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

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

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

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