There is only one way to overcome the difficulty of writing, and that is to write. Thought only becomes effective and productive at the time of writing.

The nature of the epistolary genre was revealed to me: a form of writing devoted to another person. Novels, poems, and so on, were texts into which others were free to enter, or not. Letters, on the other hand, did not exist without the other person, and their very mission, their significance, was the epiphany of the recipient.

J'ai beau savoir qu'écrire est dangereux et qu'on y risque sa vie, je m'y laisse toujours prendre.

I need to be very hungry all the time. I need to be very hungry to write.

Luckily I haven't fallen into the trap, which has claimed so many writers, of living from day to day thinking 'Ah, I'll write a book about that.

Of course you have memories, and these memories are convincing. But it's really at the moment when I write them down - when I write about my relationship with that Japanese boy in Ni d'Eve, Ni d'Adam - that they reach a degree of reality which is incandescent, that I've really conquered a story, understood it and feel that it is really part of me.