I don't want to finish my life not being alive. I think that is the saddest thing that can happen to a person. I want to keep living to the end.

I love stories, and my life is principally concentrated on stories, but not with a pretense of scientific precision.

Sartre said that wars were acts and that, with literature, you could produce changes in history. Now, I don't think literature doesn't produce changes, but I think the social and political effect of literature is much less controllable than I thought.

To write is a relief from life's problems. It is a way in which you revenge yourself. In art, the writer achieves utopia. But any attempt to achieve social utopia is bound to catastrophe. If you want a society of saints, the result is hell, repression, totalitarianism, and persecution.

Couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature.

In fiction, you are not limited by real facts. You can manipulate reality; you can invent without being disloyal to the essence of history.