I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.

The ideal reader's the same, and I suppose this person has never had a face or a gender or an age. It's just some kind of unknown other who will be sympathetic and read each word carefully and understand what I'm writing about. I suppose every writer feels this.

"The weird world rolls on..." meaning that through all the ups and downs, all the travails that we go through, all the horrors, all the wars, all the deaths, all the cruelties, there's still something that keeps us wanting to wake up the next morning and go on with our lives - to make children, to fall in love, to continue humanity.

When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.

I don't think about the stories so much, as the characters themselves. They live on, and they are almost as real as I am.

I haven't done any translating for decades now. It's something I did when I was young.

Every man is the author of his own life.