It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.

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.

You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. when you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

There are two kinds of friendship: one is genuine affection, the other is inability to refuse.

Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.