There is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics. I would say that such a library ought to be composed half of books we have read and that have really counted for us, and half of books we propose to read and presume will come to count—leaving a section of empty shelves for surprises and occasional discoveries

When I'm writing a book I prefer not to speak about it, because only when the book is finished can I try to understand what I've really done and to compare my intentions with the result.

One reads alone, even in another's presence.

Renouncing things is less difficult than people believe: it's all a matter of getting started. Once you've succeeded in dispensing with something you thought essential, you realize you can also do without something else, then without many other things.

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in a place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.

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.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.