I think that like all writers - and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer - I write primarily for myself.

I don't much believe in the idea of characters. I write with words, that is all. Whether those words are put in the mouth of this or that character does not matter to me.

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader.

My mother had been educated at a convent, and she had been converted to communism by my father during Stalin’s most rampant period, at the beginning of the 1930s. So she had two gods, God in heaven and god on earth.

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter.

I was able to read a movie before I was able to read a book.

But I do not have the reader in mind when I write. No true writer does that.

I think that like all writers – and if any writer disagrees with this, then he is not a writer – I write primarily for myself.

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

I do not believe in inspiration, but I must have a title in order to work, otherwise I am lost.