When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

Death isn't enough. It doesn't remove the stain. But a slap, a whiplash, square on the face, does. Because a man's face is as sacred as his mother or his wife.

‎Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters.

Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his.