Translation is the art of failure.

The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.

There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

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.

Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy.

In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.