The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.

Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps.

I don't admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.

The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time.

I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.