the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

What do young girls dream of? Of the knife and of blood.

Memory belongs to the imagination.

There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: 'You see,' he says, 'now that’s formalism.

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention.