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

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

The fantastic breaks the crust of appearance … something grabs us by the shoulders to throw us outside ourselves. I have always known that the big surprises await us where we have learned to be surprised by nothing, that is, where we are not shocked by ruptures in the order.

Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

The novel wins by points, the short story by knockout.

Time is born in the eyes, everybody knows that.