I felt like poisoning a monk.

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

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.

He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.

Libraries have always been humanities' way of preserving its collective wisdom

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

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