And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.

Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with.

A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.

But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.