So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana

That is what I define as a novel: something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, with characters and a plot that sustain interest from the first sentence to the last. But that is not what I do at all.

There were influences in my life that were more important than journalism, such as comic strips and radio.

I think all writing is done through memory

If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what does the sleep of unreason produce?

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.