I see is that there are many people who destroy their marriages because of one-night stands with someone else. And as the French say, “C’est ne pas grave.” It’s not something easy to swallow, but at the same time, it does not justify you to end a long-lasting relationship because something happened.
I only can write a book every two years, you know. And I write very fast, but I’m not always writing every day. I needed a contact with different things, like nature, for example. I cannot be in front of a computer trying to tell a story.
Since my childhood I learned that to understand the world we need to go further and take the risks of sailing in unknown seas.
Simplicity is the heart of everything. If you look to the desert, apparently the desert is very simple but it’s full of life, it’s full of hidden places and the beauty is that it looks simple but it’s complex in the way that it expresses the soul of the world or God.
To dream is not enough, you have to fulfill your dream.
I am living here and now. The blessing of my life is that I am totally concentrating on the present moment. And I want to be because there is nothing but the present moment.
For a writer you have to be interested in different cultures, different backgrounds. You are not there to write only about your village. You’re there to show a bit of your village, but also to understand other villages.
I feel it’s my duty as a human being, as a person who is trying – like everybody else who thinks about the state of the world – to enhance the importance of multicultural connection.
As long as you still have one bridge left, nothing is lost. But from the moment that you cannot even understand the storytelling or the music of other cultures anymore, then we become strangers to each other and the situation will become very complicated.
As a writer I have to find platforms that can use this writing process. The internet is one of them.
Every new book is a challenge. I could, of course, have stopped many years ago if it was only for money. But no, it is about building bridges among cultures, different cultures. When you want someone to understand something that is not forcefully in your culture, you use stories.
I write because I need to share my thoughts with the audience.
I don’t know if the books are making the world a much better place. I don’t write with that objective. What I know is that I see my readers creating a critical mass so we can at least understand this world in a different way.
You need to change yourself. The moment that you change yourself it is a gigantic step. And this is what I do. The book is much more important than the writer.
You have two types of writers: one like Proust who was locked in his room and wrote the masterpiece. And the other type was Hemingway who celebrated life and also wrote a masterpiece.
Brazil is my way to see the world. Being born in that country means: “you don’t have a wall separating the physical reality from the magical reality.”
People are reading more and writing more because of the internet. So the virtual world is a way for me to listen to my readers and interact with my readers. It is a way that they can voice their opinion.
I don’t choose. Normally it’s the book that chooses me.
I am very present in my work and my work is somehow an expression of my soul, but at the same time I think that a writer cannot write out of nothing.
The axe always forgets. The tree always remembers.