 But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance. |
| I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia. |
| When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression. |
| I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves. |
| I live quietly at home among my family and friends. |
| I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions. |
| An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt. |
| Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas. |
| It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world. |
| It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection. |
| The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character. |
| Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority. |
| My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search. |
| I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country. |
| But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions. |
| We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too. |
| Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression. |
| Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy. |
| I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives. |
| As a writer, I've always been interested in others. |
