To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

To have arrived at the truth means that one no longer fears death. For death and truth are similar in that they both require a great courage if one wishes to face them.

Memory is never complete. There are always parts of it that time has amputated. Writing is a way of retrieving them, of bringing the missing parts back to it, of making it more holistic.

Everybody has to die, Firdaus. I will die, and you will die. The important thing is how to live until you die.

When you are intelligent and beautiful you face a lot of problems. If you are beautiful and stupid then it's easy.

We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us -- its size, motion and meaning.

I am becoming more radical with age. I have noticed that writers, when they are old, become milder. But for me it is the opposite. Age makes me more angry.