I was never a true journalist, I was a movie critic.

A good smoker, like a good lover, always takes his time with a cigar.

I think writers rush in where everybody is very frightened to tread

I think that I've tried many times to get Cuba in my writings, especially Havana, which was once a great and fascinating city.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

Cigars must be smoked one at a time, peaceably, with all the leisure in the world. Cigarettes are of the instant, Cigars are for eternity.

I was an avid radio fan when I was a boy, as well as a great lover of comic strips

So I do not consider myself a chronicler of my fatherland or even a chronicler of Havana

What I do believe is that there is always a relationship between writing and reading, a constant interplay between the writer on the one hand and the reader on the other

Writing for me, even what you call serious writing, is play.

If the sleep of reason produces monsters, what does the sleep of unreason produce?

Best friends are literal and figurative life savers that we should thank as often as possible for rescuing us from ourselves.

Under Ed Miliband's leadership, we are changing both our party's structures and culture.

The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.

Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting

My number one goal is to love, support and be there for my son.

Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

I turned pro and won Rookie of the Year on the South African Tour and then it took me two tries at the qualifying school on the European Tour and to get my card and the rest is history.

When the two that share destiny part and reunite, beyond the frame of time, the ceased clock will awake and start to tick once again.