“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”

“Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger than someone you know. Why is that?”“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as they wish us to be”

“...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.”

“Sometimes feeling and thinking are one and the same.”

“I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.”

“Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives.”

“Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.”