For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

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

I first came out against Castro in June 1968, fifteen months after my book had been published, and you cannot imagine how quickly a void was created around me

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

I wrote for a weekly magazine and then edited a literary magazine, but I did not really feel comfortable with the profession of journalism itself

My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that