Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.

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

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.

Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.

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

I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.

I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores.