Imprecision is tolerable and verisimilar in literature, because we always tend towards it in life.

When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.

I might accept immortality, if I had to do it. But I would prefer - if there is any afterlife - to know nothing whatever about Borges, about his experiences in this world.

As to my writing short pieces, there are two reasons I can give you. The first is my invincible laziness. The second is that I've always been fond of short stories, and it always took me some trouble to get through a novel.

When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.

Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not.

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.