We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.

It is impossible to disregard such an important medium as television. We should know how to use it, learn to work in it and express new values in it.

Emigration is no longer a solution; it's a defeat. People are risking death, drowning every day, but they're knocking on doors that are not open.

I'd thought sexuality was instinctive or natural, but it's profoundly linked to inner security and cultural context.

People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

In the 70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away.