Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures

I don't consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love.

Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.

Everything has changed and nothing is changed.

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

I like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me.