The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.

The photograph [of Che Guevara], for a civilization now accustomed to thinking in images, was not the description of a single event... it was an argument.

libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about exotic places there's a feeling of travelling to distant lands

The good of a book lies in its being read.

Translation is the art of failure.