I am convinced of the validity of contradiction. There are many worlds. Each is true, at its time, in its own fashion
I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels
I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread
When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.
I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.
If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what does the sleep of unreason produce?
What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other
I really believe that if you're going to bring a child into the world, it's your job to parent that world. Especially if it's just you; you don't pawn her off on somebody.
Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the whole week. Why? Because most people who are even worshiping God, are worshiping a God they don't know. They're worshiping a god that looks more like Santa Claus than the God of Scripture. They're worshiping a god that is a figment of their own imagination. They created a god in their own likeness and they worship the god they've made.
One of the things I love about translation is it obliterates the self. When I'm trying to figure out what Tu Fu has to say, I have to kind of impersonate Tu Fu. I have to take on, if you will, his voice and his skin in English, and I have to try to get as deeply into the poem as possible. I'm not trying to make an equivalent poem in English, which can't be done because our language can't accommodate the kind of metaphors within metaphors the Chinese written language can, and often does, contain.
My idea of good poetry is any dog doing anything.