Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.

If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.