I would distinguish between a visitor and a pilgrim: both will come to a place and go away again, but a visitor arrives, a pilgrim is restored. A visitor passes through a place; the place passes through the pilgrim.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

It is useless either to hate or to love truth - but it should be noticed.

He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.

Whoever mourns the dead mourns himself.

It is the function of a liberal university not to give right answers, but to ask right questions.

To be any sort of competent writer one must keep one's psychological distance from the supreme artists.