In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

I think we all have a little bit of that beautiful madness that keeps us walking when everything around us is so insanely sane.

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.

There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them at the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility; their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.

I realized that searching was my symbol, the emblem of those who go out at night with nothing in mind, the motives of a destroyer of compasses.

Now that I think about it, it seems to me that’s what Idiocy is: the ability to be enthusiastic all the time about anything you like, so that a drawing on the wall does not have to be diminished by the memory of the frescoes of Giotto in Padua.

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