When I was a very young author, I knew I needed to build myself a tower outside of Europe. Like when you're a hunter, and build towers to watch the animals move. I knew I would never understand the world without that perspective. I came to Africa for that rational reason, although I love Mozambique now.

Some people give theirselves a certain number of white weeks once in a year, when they do not drink a single drop of alcohol. It is really wise. I myself have a few weeks per year, let us call them white or black, when I am not interested in the world around. When I come back from this isolation of the news, I realize that I have missed nothing significant. We live in the rain of disinformation and rumors, where the truth is a very small number. In those weeks of dissociation I seek for knowledge that lies within me.

When someone asks me to list the 10 best novels ever written, I always refuse to answer.

Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.

To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child.

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

‎Not having time for a person, not being able to sit in silence together with somebody, that's the same as rejecting them, as being scornful about them.