I wouldn't reread Sartre today. Compared to everything I've read since, his fiction seems dated and has lost much of its value.

When I was young, I was a passionate reader of Sartre. I've read the American novelists, in particular the lost generation - Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos - especially Faulkner. Of the authors I read when I was young, he is one of the few who still means a lot to me.

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

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.

You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

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