Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one has a job and a free half-day. Reading is the conveyance of this condition.

... nothing is more human than substituting the quantity of words and actions for their character. But using imprecise words is very similar to using lots of words, for the more imprecise a word is, the greater the area it covers.

Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.

If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

... the genius never makes anything new, but always something that is just different, and the average talents provide him the possibility within which his genius condenses into achievements.

Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.