The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

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

A blind determination to save the prestige of personal existence, rather than, through an impartial disdain for its impotence and entanglement, at least to detach it from the background of universal delusion, is triumphing almost everywhere.

Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange our experiences...Experience has fallen in value. And it looks as if it is continuing to fall into bottomlessness.

Books, too, begin like the week – with a day of rest in memory of their creation. The preface is their Sunday.

Literature tells very little to those who understand it.

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.