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

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.

Even though what I enjoy most is literature, I would not want to live only in a world of fiction, cut off from the rest of life. No - I want to always have a foot in the street, to be inmersed in the activities of my contemporaries, in the times, in the place where I live.

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who learned to read at the age of 5. This changed his life. Owing to the adventure tales he read, he discovered a way to escape from the poor house, the poor country, and the poor reality in which he lived.

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

There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.