The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maidens?

My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books.

Our most noted satirists are true columnists and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented exposé.

Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

I have always been fascinated by paranoid people imagining conspiracies. I am fascinated by this in a critical way.

Books always speak of other books.