The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.

Ugliness is more inventive than beauty. Beauty always follows certain camps. I think it's more amusing - ugliness - than beauty.

I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!

The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.