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.

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

This must be what it means to be a ghost, being certain that life exists, because your four senses say so, and yet unable to see it.

God, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves.

Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions.

In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.