I chose to believe that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive us our trespasses.
Writing has always had a tactile quality for me. It's a physical experience.
I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end.
The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all. I can't describe how deeply I love them all.
We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.
The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle.
When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.
Just be nice to me while I am doing the scene; that is all. I don't want big cars, I don't want big hotel rooms.
Think of the millions of young men who died fighting for democracy. We spit on their graves when we let democracy slip away into the sewer of illegal money.
Some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.
Novelists never have to footnote.