If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.

The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.

Libraries can take the place of God.

The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.

A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.

A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.

A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny.