I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists. I think in the end this kind of activity absorbs one in such a way that it becomes one's way of life.

A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be

I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.

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.

We were trained as writers with the idea that literature is something that can change reality, that it's not just a very sophisticated entertainment, but a way to act.

We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.

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