“ I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern. ”

“ People living deeply have no fear of death. ”

“ If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. ”

“ It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it. ”

“ The only abnormality is the incapacity to love. ”

“ There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do. ”

“ When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. ”

“ The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. ”

“ Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat. ”

“ There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. ”