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

I couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature.

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

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.

But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.