I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.

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

I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

I have one main reader, Miriam Gomez, my wife. She reads everything I write - I have not finished writing something and she is already reading it.

I have assiduously avoided calling my books 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