It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.

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

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.

I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.

All writing is dreaming

To bless thine enemy is a good way to satisfy thy vanity.

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.