I do not repeat conversations that I can't remember. And it's something that irritates me a great deal, because I think most memoirs are false novels.

For me a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

In my later novels, I systematically used the convention, and then a moment came - when did it come? With The Book of Illusions, maybe - I thought, I don't need them anymore, I don't need them, I want to integrate the dialogue into the text.

Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.

There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.

This is very rare for anyone in life to pursue something and that thing being the thing you actually most want to do. It's all about the inner, rather than the outer. Whether people like or don't like my work, read it or don't read it, it's just been a gift from the gods that I've been able to sit at my desk for the last almost 50 years and do the things I've wanted to do.