My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.
Homer’s work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.
Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned.
Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious.
Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.
Beauty is boring because it is predictable.
I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.
It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one’s own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.
Libraries can take the place of God.
It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.
It comes down to a question of attention: it’s difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.
If somebody writes a book and doesn’t care for the survival of that book, he’s an imbecile.
I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22.
I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.
I have to admit that I only read ‘War and Peace’ when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.
Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.