I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.

I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird

Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.

All my life I've been hiding.

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.