The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.

Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.

I write stories about conspiracies and paranoid characters while I am, in fact, a very skeptical person.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.

For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.