People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.

All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse. There is no certainty that God actually did grant man dominion over other creatures. What seems more likely, in fact, is that man invented God to sanctify the dominion that he usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.

The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

Love is a desire for that lost half of ourselves.

In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.