I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels

Watching a movie from beginning to end is like reading, because even though what you see are images, they are telling you a story

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me

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

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.

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.

I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself