In my case, literature is a kind of revenge. It's something that gives me what real life can't give me - all the adventures, all the suffering. All the experiences I can only live in the imagination, literature completes.

That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.

If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.

Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.

Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.

I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.