All writing is dreaming

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.

Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly.

I don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose.

The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but ... hypotheses may not.