I think all writing is done through memory

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.

For me, words are just words, nothing else

No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

My mother had been educated at a convent, and she had been converted to communism by my father during Stalin's most rampant period, at the beginning of the 1930s. So she had two gods, God in heaven and god on earth.

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 think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread