It is by extending oneself, by exercising some capacity previously unused that you come to a better knowledge of your own potential.

What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

I don't believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention.

The world does not get to be a better or a worse place; it just gets more senescent.