Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears.

At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.

every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing

...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.

Each sort of cheese reveals a pasture of a different green, under a different sky.