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.

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

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

You don't have to try to be contemporary. You are already contemporary. What one has in mythology is being evolved all the time. Personally, I think I can do with Greek and Old Norse mythology. For example, I don't think I stand in need of planes or of railways or of cars.

For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.

It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.

I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on.