With all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the USA and China.

If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to "dissolve" harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!").

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries.