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.

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

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

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

In the world's structure dream loosens individuality like a bad tooth.