We used to send whole flocks of birds shooting out of our mouths and never managed to grab them by their wings.

I am fascinated by all the new technology that creates places for us to meet in what is called cyberspace. I understand what it must have meant for the rebellions in the 19th century, especially in 1830 and 1848, when the mass circulated newspaper became so important for the spreading of information.

Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss.

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.

I'm not very much of a reader really, because I find much of it very bad, very uninteresting, very speculative.

We don't have time to argue. Nobody has time.

He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.