Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of others.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked.

I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.