— Your zodiac sign?
— Aquarius.
— Are you a believer?
— I believe in a country of bright houses, clean gardens, healthy children, skilled workers, knowledgeable doctors, untainted poets.
— Are your parents believers?
— My parents are Armenian peasants: believers one day, not believers for two.
— Your favourite animal?
— At one time I used to ask my friends to draw a lamb, a kid, a calf, a foal, a little tree, and a little boy beside it.
— Your favourite season?
— Early spring, the beginning of May; a clear, full autumn.
— What follies do you indulge in?
— I have none; self-control is always there. I do not like madmen.
— Do you like your appearance?
— I have not liked my appearance. That is why I have tried to correct it through literature.
— Has there been any extraordinary event in your life?
— There has been one, but you cannot call it an event, because it has been continuing for several decades now: my marriage.
— Are you a happy man?
— Happy to the extent that once or twice I have seen the face of the god of literature.
— Have you ever wanted to give up on life? Do you love life?
— Had I been brave, I ought to have given it up long ago. But you would be left without anyone to look after you. I fear you would remain a flock of sheep that has lost its shepherd, to be eaten by the wolf. Perhaps this is self-deception, or perhaps I am assuming some role as a man avoiding death…
— What is literature to you?
— Literature is my creed.
— What truth has literature established?
— Literature has brought God and placed him within the human being.
— What do you think about the relationship between literature and ideology?
— What ideology should a writer adhere to? If it is nationalist, it is not literature; if communist, it is not literature; if humanist, it is sugary slime; if bourgeois, it is not literature. If he is an adherent, he is not a writer but a preacher. The writer is required to be present simultaneously at all the points listed and many, many more…
— What is the writer’s mission today?
— To create a language in which time can be read.
— What is the strength of your literature? What did you want to change in the world, and what changed or did not change?
— I wanted to write a Gospel for the Armenian land.
— What would you like to save people from, those of Tsmakut and those elsewhere?
— From that ambitious culture which musters armies, carries its ideals by force of arms into another’s country and imposes them on people, as though there were an idea greater than the human being. Let us remember and curse Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Hitler. It is terrible when these epidemic “ideas” break out among great nations…
— What is true literature?
— If you read and say, “This is not about me, but about my neighbour,” the work’s precision is approximate.
— “Art for art’s sake”: does that principle, pure art, exist?
— Only when art is for art’s sake does it become art for the human being.
— Who is the Armenian?
— He does not fall to the very bottom or rise to the very top. That man is the Armenian.
— On the universe?
— The limit of the universe is our madness.
— And infinity?
— Infinity is our powerlessness.
— Your question to yourself?
— Hrant, you have drunk all your cognacs, enjoyed all your pleasures. What do you want from the world?