In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.

Memories images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.

My confidence in the future of literature consists in the knowledge that there are things that only literature can give us, by means specific to it.

I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.

Sometimes one who thinks himself incomplete is merely young.

Each new Clarice, compact as a living body with its smells and its breath, shows off, like a gem, what remains of the ancient Clarices, fragmentary and dead.