“To those who no longer have a homeland, writing becomes home”

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”

“Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.
Of course those who write short books have even less to say.”

“Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.”

“There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writing’s sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.”

“Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.”

“The continent had to be discovered emotionally. It had to become a homeland and feel like home. The sense of overpowering space, the isolation, the warmth of summer, the garish light, the shiny-leafed trees, the birds and insects, the smell of air filled with dust, the strange silences, and the landscapes in all their oddness had to become familiar.”

“I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved. […] I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living.”

“People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”