I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.

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

Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.

A writer should have another lifetime to see if he's appreciated.

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.

The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.