"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.

Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position ... The stopgap Luigi Paryson's 'zeppa' accepts its own banality, because without the speed that the banal allows up, it would slow up a passage that is crucial for the outcome of the work and its interpretation.

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

We like lists because we don't want to die.