My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.

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

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.

I am a writer of fragments.

I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.

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

Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.