Art is very mysterious. I wonder if you can really do any damage to art. I think that when we're writing, something comes through or should come through, in spite of our theories. So theories are not really important.

It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

All writing is dreaming

Censorship is the mother of metaphor.

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.