If you read the poets of the 19th century in Latin America, you would see that Havana or Mexico City or Buenos Aires are incredibly modern and global cities that they were not. And eventually they became real, and they became real because people read these books and tried to live in a better world.

In Mexico, I think I'm considered conservative. Not politically - in terms of form and experimentation.

I don't believe in inspiration at all. We live in a world that demands explanation. And fiction has the capability to offer explanations for things.

Caravaggio was a tormented, defiant, bisexual, angry young man - a maestro who looked nothing like a maestro.

I work with history because I come from a country that has a tremendous thirst for reality.

I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.

I envy guys who can write funny.

Our future is ours to write.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

I write in longhand on yellow legal pads.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.