I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

For many years I have devoted articles and essays to newspapers, from the inside. So criticism of the newspapers was a topic that I practiced for a long time.

We live for books.

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.

You tell me these two were my parents, so now I know but it's a memory that you've given me. I'll remember the photo from now on, but not them.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.