Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.

When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.

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

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

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.

True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.

All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.