There is this brutal side to tennis. It was invented as a game for kings and cardinals and people with a lot of power who didn't have to share the field with other players.

Caravaggio was a tormented, defiant, bisexual, angry young man - a maestro who looked nothing like a maestro.

I was not able to be the front forward of a soccer team - that is a way to make people super happy every Sunday. What I can do is tell stories and try to put my coin in that discussion.

If you read the poets of the 19th century in Latin America, you would see that Havana or Mexico City or Buenos Aires are incredibly modern and global cities that they were not. And eventually they became real, and they became real because people read these books and tried to live in a better world.

'Flaubert's Parrot' is an amphibious book in which what appears to be a personal essay about Flaubertian writing is gradually, delicately transformed into an extremely sad novel in which the differences between character, author, and narrator are less clear than they appear at first glance.

My definition of freedom is still ruled by the reluctance to live a conventional life, from Emilio Salgari's pirates.