You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter

It means that no matter what you write, be it a biography, an autobiography, a detective novel, or a conversation on the street, it all becomes fiction as soon as you write it down.

Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me

I know that many writers have had to write under censorship and yet produced good novels; for instance, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote under Catholic censorship.

I am the only British writer who writes in Spanish

I live in London and I am a British subject, although I do write in Spanish, of course

A very wise author once said that a writer writes for himself, and then publishes for money. I write for myself and publish just for the reader