We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.

Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.

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

I don't accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real world.

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.

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.

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