"Like many others who turned into writers, I disappeared into books when I
was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the
woods. What surprised and still surprises me is that there was another
side to the forest of stories and the solitude, that I came out that
other side and met people there. Writers are solitaries by vocation and
necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is
not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in
part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working.
Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through
books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that
act that is so intimate and yet so alone".
