Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

We will always return to the private and inviolable act of reading as our culture's way of developing an individual.

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its makers attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

I’ve carved the puppet, and I manipulate the strings, but while it’s on stage, the show belongs to the puppet.

Imagination is like the drunk man who lost his watch and must get drunk again to find it.

Art is always the replacement of indifference by attention.

The birds suffer their suffering each in a lifetime, forgetting it as they go.