The only selfish life is a timid one.

[Fiction and poetry] are medicines, they're doses, and they heal the rupture that reality makes on the imagination.

I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older.

Some people are happy when they are at the sea; I'm happy when I'm standing in front of a shelf of books. It feels like the known place and also the beginning of a new adventure. It has that simultaneous paradoxical effect of making me feel absolutely calm and very excited.

Yes, the past is another country, but one that we can visit, and once there we can bring back the things we need.

I don't own my emotions unless I can think about them. I am not afraid of feeling but I am afraid of feeling unthinkingly. I don't want to drown. My head is my heart's lifebelt.

It doesn't have to be like that but mostly it is.