...sometimes we ask ourselves why happiness took so long to arrive, why it didn't come sooner, but appears suddenly, as now, when we've given up hope of it ever arriving, it's likely then that we won't know what to do, and rather than it being a question of choosing between laughter and tears, we will be filled by a secret anxiety to which we might not know how to respond at all.

It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.

I believe that I've been asked all possible questions. I, myself, if I were a journalist, would not know what to ask me.

The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas.

With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.

Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.