When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.

The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.

They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.

I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.