New York is perhaps the only place in America where you feel at the centre and not at the margins, in the provinces, so for that reason I prefer its horror to this privileged beauty, its enslavement to the freedoms which remain local and privileged and very particularized, and which do not represent a genuine antithesis.

What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?

The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.

Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.

New York is perhaps the only place in America where you feel at the centre and not at the margins, in the provinces, so for that reason I prefer its horror to this privileged beauty, its enslavement to the freedoms which remain local and privileged and very particularized, and which do not represent a genuine antithesis.

In general confusion youth recognizes itself and rejoices.

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.