Two aesthetics exist: the passive aesthetic of mirrors and the active aesthetic of prisms. Guided by the former, art turns into a copy of the environment's objectivity or the individual's psychic history. Guided by the latter, art is redeemed, makes the world into its instrument, and forges, beyond spatial and temporal prisons, a personal vision.

I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out.

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

I think that the reader should enrich what he is reading. He should misunderstand the text; he should change it into something else.

Whoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.