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.

Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter

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

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

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