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.

all stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.

I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.

Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

A stomach accustomed to hunger is satisfied with very little.

The U.S. needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan.

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.