Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane - as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.

Books always speak of other books.

[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.

A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor.

The good of a book lies in its being read.

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.