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

Knowledge of the world means dissolving the solidity of the world.

One reads alone, even in another's presence.

A writer's work has to take account of many rhythms: Vulcan's and Mercury's, a message of urgency obtained by dint of patient and meticulous adjustments and an intuition so instantaneous that, when formulated, it acquires the finality of something that could never have been otherwise. But it is also the rhythm of time that passes with no other aim than to let feelings and thoughts settle down, mature, and shed all impatience or ephemeral contingency.

The more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there.

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.

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