One of the many ways of contesting level-zero, and one of the best, is to take photographs, an activity in which one should start becoming adept very early in life, teach it to children since it requires discipline, aesthetic education, a good eye and steady fingers.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

Literature is ... a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into.

She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.

The mysterious does not spell itself out in capital letters, as many writers believe, but is always between, an interstice.