On those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me and treating me badly.

My father and he had cemented one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.

On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence.

Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.

I have no way of knowing whether the events that I am about to narrate are effects or causes.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.