God must not engage in theology. The writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us.

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.

A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.