Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?

In general confusion youth recognizes itself and rejoices.

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.

There is still one of which you never speak.' Marco Polo bowed his head. 'Venice,' the Khan said. Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?' The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.' And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.

I will start out this evening with an assertion: fantasy is a place where it rains.

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.