One can easily classify all works of fiction either as descendants of the Iliad or of the Odyssey.

It isn’t happiness I am concerned with but experience.

When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing.

Religions tend to disappear with man's good fortune.

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything.