Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.

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

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

History breaks down into images, not into stories.

Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

It is in a small village in the Pyrenees where no one knows me 7that my life will come to a close.... There is not enough time remaining for me to write all the letters I would like to write.