Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event.

From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

The machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men.

We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

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

If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

I...have always known that my destiny was, above all, a literary destiny — that bad things and some good things would happen to me, but that, in the long run, all of it would be converted into words. Particularly the bad things, since happiness does not need to be transformed: happiness is its own end.