Writer

Many of the books I read, I had to read them in French, English, or Italian, because they hadn't been translated into Spanish.

Nothing good ever happens by itself - it is achieved through striving, though this sometimes bears a high price.

If, as a Spaniard, I am so often offended by the stereotypes that abound regarding my country, how can I accept and repeat the ones that fall even more heavily upon Israel?

As a writer, you live in permanent self-doubt; you're on permanent trial.

Money makes people bold and cosmopolitan; if you are poor, you are naturally conservative. It's not easy to be a bohemian when you have to worry about what is going to happen with you and with your next paycheck.

There can be no better prize for a writer than one awarded by an international book fair.

I'm afraid I have an incurable urge for teaching.

When I write short fiction or novellas, I like to leave a hint of the fantastic, of the unreal. If you write a completely fantastic novel with ghosts and everything, the effect is less powerful than if you portray an absolutely realistic situation and, in the middle of this, you put a layer of fantasy, of mystery.

I have absolute respect for Israel and people in Israel who are critical of their own country.

Here in Spain, there are Argentine Jews, children and grandchildren of immigrants of Jews who fled Germany or Austria in the thirties, and in the seventies during the dictatorship, they had to go into exile again.

The fact that evil exists in the world bothers me. I think that people do terrible things for ideological or political reasons. I think that evil stems from ideology. People are taught to hate.

Shakespeare is a permanent presence in the English letters.

The worth of a prize depends on the people who have received it before you.

There are two types of stories: public and private.

An idea like equality between men and women, which is now accepted in the West, is quite new.

Cervantes is the most important Spanish writer. But he is not the most representative of the Spanish. His irony, his sense of humor - they are too subtle to seem Spanish.

A writer doesn't write about just anything. He writes about things he has an affinity for.

People think that dreams are better than reality but this is not always the case; sometimes, because you dream too much, you are unable to see what you have in front of your very eyes.

A few British suffragettes everybody laughed at started the cause of equality between men and women.

The '80s was the time for the great so-called modernization in Spain. It was a moment when it seemed that everything was breaking up and moving fast into modernity.