Seeing is limited by two borders: Strong light, which blinds, and total darkness.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.

And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

Laughter, on the other hand, " Petrarch went on, "is an explosion that tears us away from the world and throws us back into our own cold solitude. Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry. That's why I tell you yet again, and you want to keep in mind: Boccaccio doesn't understand love. Love can never be laughable. Love has nothing in common with laughter.

The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.