I was fascinated by quotations and lists. And then I noticed that other people were fascinated by quotations and lists: people as different as Borges and Walter Benjamin, Novalis and Godard.

[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing.

Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

Creativity needs to be taken care of. It's like a big baby that needs to be nourished.