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.*

The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears.

The sea where living creatures were at one time immersed is now enclosed within their bodies.

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

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. . . .

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