To ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends.

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.

Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.

Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.