Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.

I am a person with leftist convictions, and always have been.

Death is the inventor of God.

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.

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.

Today's bread does not eliminate yesterday's hunger, much less that of tomorrow.