 Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity. |
| Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer. |
| I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it. |
| There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is. |
| Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts. |
| I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends. |
| I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. |
| In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays. |
| Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties. |
| The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. |
| We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations. |
| It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people. |
| Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. |
| The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas. |
| I always ask two questions: How many countries have military bases in the United States? And in how many countries does the United States not have military bases? |
| What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being? |
| People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich. |
| I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see. |
| As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things. |
| The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO. |
