He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.

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

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.

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

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.

Contemporary societies have lost the sense of the feast but have kept the obscure drive for it.

The followers must feel besieged.