A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor.

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

You tell me these two were my parents, so now I know but it's a memory that you've given me. I'll remember the photo from now on, but not them.

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.

There are two kinds of friendship: one is genuine affection, the other is inability to refuse.

The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.