All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.

I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it's almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience.

We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

To tell you the truth, I'm not unhappy about it. I'm not even sure that I like the idea of adapting novels into films. It's very difficult to do, and it usually doesn't work. There are exceptions, but generally speaking, one feels disappointed with the result.

Writing is, after all, a gesture towards other people, giving something to others. And so it's not a completely hermetic exercise. It's really an opening up.

You have to protect it too, you can't let just any stupid person take it and do something demoralizing with it. At the same time, I don't believe in being so rigid about controlling what happens either.