The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up.

If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.