The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to be subsidized by the state. It leads to an intellectual and artistic castration.

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

Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

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.

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

Journalism has been very important for me - for a long time I made my living as a journalist, and it also serves as a source of ideas. Many of the things I have written I would not have written without the experience of being a journalist.

The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.