Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.

I couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature.

Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty.

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

North American society could not have reached its state of high development and modernity had it not been an open society.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)