I am very interested in what has been called bad taste. I believe the fear of displaying a soi-disant bad taste stops us from venturing into special cultural zones.

My greatest aspiration was always to live in the tropics.

I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.

I believe that people who don't achieve anything in life are isolated and resent those that are successful.

Kafka truly illustrates the way the environment oppresses the individual. He shows how the unconscious controls our lives.

I had stories that needed more space than the hour and a half or two hours a movie gives you.

The translator's task is to create, in his or her own language, the same tensions appearing in the original. That's hard!