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 known uncertainty: a state unknown to the Greeks.

The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.

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

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

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

A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.