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.

I can't think of another writer who can move me as surreptitiously as Vian does

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.

I'm such a jerk; it had never occurred to me that when we look at a photo from the front, the eyes reproduce exactly the position and the vision of the lens; it's these things that are taken for granted and it never occurs to anyone to think about them.

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

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

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