I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order.

To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return.

True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

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

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say.

In the end, we get older, we kill everyone who loves us through the worries we give them, through the troubled tenderness we inspire in them, and the fears we ceaselessly cause.