The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

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

The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city.

This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .

There is still one of which you never speak.' Marco Polo bowed his head. 'Venice,' the Khan said. Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?' The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.' And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.