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

Many of my books have begun with the title, because naming a work already in progress makes no sense to me.

A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.

I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread

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

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

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.