What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

The real hero is always a hero by mistake.

I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22.

For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us.

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.

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.