Education is the motor-force of revolution.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
I always felt a little worm inside me: 'Now you need to write a novel with a woman protagonist.
Cuba needs a dose of perestroika.
In literature, you know only what you imagine
No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.
For me, life without literature is inconceivable. I think that Don Quixote in a physical sense never existed, but Don Quixote exists more than anybody who existed in 1605. Much more. There's nobody who can compete with Don Quixote or with Hamlet. So in the end we have the reality of the book as the reality of the world and the reality of history.
I don't mind growing old. If I have to go before my time, this is how I'll go-- cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other.
The German people are an orderly, vain, deeply sentimental and rather insensitive people. They seem to feel at their best when they are singing in chorus, saluting or obeying orders.
Life has its rhythm and we have ours. They're designed to coexist in harmony, so that when we do what is ours to do and otherwise let life be, we garner acceptance and serenity.
Because one has written other books does not mean the next becomes any easier.