Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

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.

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

A writer's work is the product of laziness.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.