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

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

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.

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

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.

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.