I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.

Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.

Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!

It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.

Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.