I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.
Your reality, isn’t restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you’re inside of
The nicest thing about feeling happy is that you think you'll never be unhappy again.
I allow my intuition to lead my path.
If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.
Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.
What better model of a synthesis than a nocturnal dream? Dreams simplify, don't they?
I didn't choose literature. Literature chose me. There was no decision on my side.
As a rule, one should never place form over content.
I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.
I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality.
For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.
The writer needs to react to his or her own internal universe, to his or her own point of view. If he or she doesn't have a personal point of view, it's impossible to be a creator.
In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?
If it's great stuff, the people who consume it are nourished. It's a positive force.
It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied.
I believe in characters as vehicles of exposition. Their voices are full of hidden clues, and I like to listen to them.
I began teaching in New York because I needed to stay in the United States and didn't have my immigration papers in order, so working for a university was a way of resolving the issue.
Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time.
Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying.
Writers are not meant for action.
If a spectator with a philosophical mind, somebody accustomed to reading books, gets the same kind of information in a movie, he might not fully understand it.
I've always wondered why there isn't a great French novel about the German occupation. The nouveau roman authors weren't interested in telling that sort of thing.
I locate that special problem in a character and then try to understand it. That's the genesis of all my work.
It doesn't matter that the way of life shown by Hollywood was phony. It helped you hope.
