The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.

Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.

The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.

As a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight.

His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further.

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.