I believe that literature always goes precisely there where the damage to a person has been done.

You can't build a future if you don't have a past.

For me, each journey to Romania is also a journey into another time, in which I never knew which events in my life were coincidence and which were staged. This is why I have, in every public statement I have made, demanded access to the secret files kept on me which, under various pretexts, have invariably been denied me.

Working with language requires beauty for me.

Ceausescu was mad, and he made half of Romania mad. I'm mad because of him.

Happiness may perhaps be shared. But not luck, sadly.

Literature speaks with everyone individually - it is personal property that stays inside our heads. And nothing speaks to us as forcefully as a book, which expects nothing in return other than that we think and feel.

It was only against my mother's will that I attended the preparatory high school in the city. She wanted me to become a seamstress in the village. She knew that if I moved to the city, I would become corrupted. And I was. I started to read books.

Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.

Romanian is a very beautiful, sensual, poetic language.