If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving.

Americans have a warrior's mentality, most of them. That's how this society was built. The fact that you own a gun and shoot to defend your life is a very American way of thinking.

If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.

It's going to go away because we all need silence. We all need time to reflect and think. I am not at all pessimistic about this.

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

The slave who dances is free ... while he is dancing.

There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized.