It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects.

You may win your heart's desire, but in the end you're cheated of it by death.

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

We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.