Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception... as film is able to do today... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism.

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.