That's the miracle of fiction. I use it to spray on certain moments or places from my youth.

A novelist's lack of awareness of and critical distance to his own body of work is due to a phenomenon that I have noticed in myself and many others: as soon as it is written, every new book erases the last one, leaving me with the impression that I have forgotten it.

I've always had the wish, the nostalgia to be able to write detective novels. At heart, the principal themes of detective novels are close to the things that obsess me: disappearance, the problems of identity, amnesia, the return to an enigmatic past.

Recently, I looked back at my first manuscripts and was struck by the lack of space, of breath. That's exactly how it felt, back then... like I was suffocating.

If Leander Paes can be playing in Grand Slams at 44 and Narain Karthikeyan race at 40 and be so successful at it, I see no reason why I can't play at 34. They are my motivation, as they have set targets and standards for people like us to achieve.

But I have been interested in dreams, really since I was a kid. I have always been fascinated by the idea that your mind, when you are asleep, can create a world in a dream and you are perceiving it as though it really existed.

I dig those kinds of roles where I have to dig down and find some internal motivation. I like tough roles.

I want to have time for myself, my family and my friends. It's important because in order to sing well, you must have inspiration, and inspiration comes from life, from living.