We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.

I felt an unrelenting restlessness. It was the first time I had ever experienced jealousy, and that emotion clung to my skin day and night like a dark stain, a contamination I could not shed; it became so unbearable that when finally I rid myself of it, I was freed forever of the desire to possess another person or the temptation ever to belong to anyone.

A book is not an end in itself; it is only a way to touch someone - a bridge extended across a space of loneliness and obscurity - and sometimes it is a way of winning other people to our causes.

I'm always following the characters and I'm always interested in what happens to them, but what happens to them is conditioned by the circumstances in which they live.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me.

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence.