My pleasure was to copy, not to create.

I felt the need to tell stories to understand myself.

What better model of a synthesis than a nocturnal dream? Dreams simplify, don't they?

My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor.

I can work in films as long as the story doesn't have a realistic nature. If I'm working with an allegory, a fantasy, it can be developed in synthetic terms.

I think cinema is closer to allegories than to reality. It's closer to our dreams.

I am only interested in bad taste if I can enjoy a gruesome tango or watch a movie that makes me cry.

If it's great stuff, the people who consume it are nourished. It's a positive force.

Your reality, isn’t restricted by this cell we live in. If you read something, if you study something, you transcend any cell you’re inside of

If the novelist shares his or her problems with the characters, he or she is able to study his personal unconscious.

Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying.

The man who interprets Nature is always held in great honor.

If, when you talk to people, they keep backing away from you, it's because you're TOO CLOSE, alright? SO DON'T KEEP ADVANCING ON THEM LIKE A HUMAN GLACIER.

Poetry can communicate the actual quality of experience with a subtlety and precision unapproachable by any other means.

The way to know about championship quality is to learn from champions, and that I did; studying them with professional purpose during my time in the ring and from habitual interest afterward.

The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads.

I do not think that we have a “right” to happiness. If happiness happens, say thanks.

We all have our own personal Andes.

I don't know if you know who you are, until you lose who you are.

The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.

In this respect, I suppose I'm the total opposite of Garry [Kasparov]. With his very emotive body language at the [chess]board he shows and displays all his emotions. I don't.