Meanings are translatable. Words are untranslatable… More briefly – a word is translatable, its sound is not.

No one has ever stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Meanings are translatable. Words are untranslatable… More briefly – a word is translatable, its sound is not.

Don't you know no one can escape the power of creatures reaching out with breath alone?

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.

What is this gypsy passion for separation, this readiness to rush off when we've just met? My head rests in my hands as I realize, looking into the night that no one turning over our letters has yet understood how completely and how deeply faithless we are, which is to say: how true we are to ourselves.