I hardly know what I'm going to write - an article, a story, a poem in free verse - or in some regular form. I only know that when I have the first sentence. And when the first sentence makes a kind of pattern, then I find out the kind of rhythm I'm looking for.

Lully's machine, Mill's fear and Lasswitz's chaotic library can be the subject of jokes, but they exaggerate a propensity which is common: making metaphysics and the arts into a kind of play with combinations.

He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

The certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.

I am not sure of anything, I know nothing . . . can you imagine that I don't even know the date of my own death?

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

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.