Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.

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

Love is a desire for that lost half of ourselves.

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.

Speak truth to power.

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.

What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.