Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.

Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.

All those moments, those memories. Everything that we are, compressed in just two or three kilos of paper — the weight of a human heart.

I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crashing among the hazels and nougatines

Places have their own characters. . . . But the people begin to look the same.

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is

What is a writer of fiction but a liar with a licence?