One of them, for example, which will probably haunt me more than any other is the problem of communication.
I adore life but I don`t fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible.
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.
It was night and I could see a large and calm lake, reflecting the moon. Black mountains rose around it. I arrived from between two of these mountains, I looked at the lake and the moon, and that was it, nothing else happened.
The fact that we are I don`t know how many millions of people, yet communication, complete communication, is completely impossible between two of those people, is to me one of the biggest tragic themes in the world.
I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.
Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person.
I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men.
Of course, I also gave him the ineffable pleasures of pipe smoking. And no children, because when this character was created I did not yet have the four children I later had. I must add I also gave him a certain taste for food.
The lake and the mountains have become my landscape, my real world.
I repeat to him the contradictory opinions I heard around Europe, not on Hitler`s work, but on his personality, on his very worth.