It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space

Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book.

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

We could say, then, that man is an instrument the world employs to renew its own image constantly.

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they area dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

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