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

The fact that we are I don't know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world

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.

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

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

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.

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