Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Books always speak of other books.

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.

When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.