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.

The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.

I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.

If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.

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.

Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits.

When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.