Literature was always for me what it will be: A long, inner diary, an uninterrupted dialogue with myself. (...) Finally, I became a Cartarescuologist, the only one in existence. [speech, Leipziger Buchpreis 2015, translated]
Those of the Romanian writers, who succeeded at crossing the mentality limits of East and West (and by doing so reaffirming them again to some extent), became stars in the heaven of European culture: Tristan Tzara, Eugène Ionesco, Emil Cioran. But many others - who at least in some cases are not worse - got trapped in the sweet cage of an infinitely expressive and therefore untranslatable language: Urmuz, Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga are still unknown [in the West]. [speech, Leipziger Buchpreis 2015, translated]