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.

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

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

There are many things behind a good novel, but in particular there is a lot of work - a lot of patience, a lot of stubbornness, and a critical spirit.

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

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

Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man's traditional mistrust of the man who is not part of his tribe, that 'other' who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, and who participates in mysterious rites and rituals.