How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!

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

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

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

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.

Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!