My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them.

Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.

Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism.

I came to the idea of how fine it would be to think of an encyclopedia of an actual world, and then of an encyclopedia, a very rigorous one of course, of an imaginary world, where everything should be linked.

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

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