Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.

My characters are driven by a passionate desire for justice. They are rebellious and incorruptible.

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

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

My sensibility steers me toward writers who are out on their own.

To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.

I am glad to have found a readership, but one can’t write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper. A writer creates an imaginary world that he transmits to others.