If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.

Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story.

Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.

Whether there is such a thing as Reality, of which the various levels are only partial aspects, or whether there are only levels, is something that literature cannot decide. Literature recognizes rather the *reality of the levels.*

Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can’t make anything.

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.

It is only after you have come to know the surface of things ... that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible.