José Eduardo Agualusa

“Dreams Are Where It All Begins”

“We're only happy--truly happy--when it's forever after, but only children live in a world where things can last forever.”

“All stories are connected. In the end everything is connected.”

“A man with a good story is practically a king.”

“I was happy with her and I suspect I never knew her.Would I have been truly happy if I had actually known her?”

“Monsters, show me the monsters: these people out on the street. My people.”

“In your novels do you lie deliberately or just out of ignorance?"Laughter. A murmur of approval. The writer hesitated a few seconds. Then counter-attacked:"I'm a liar by vocation," he shouted. "I lie with joy! Literature is the only chance for a true liar to attain any sort of social acceptance."Then more soberly, he added - his voice lowered - that the principal difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that in the former there exists only one truth, the truth as imposed by power, while in free countries every man has the right to defend his own version of events.Truth, he said, is a superstition.”

“I have understood over these last years that in order to believe in God, it is essential to have trust in humanity. There is no God without humanity. I continue not to believe, neither in God, nor in humanity.”