Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

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

All great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one.

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.

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

It is only for those without hope that hope is given.

Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.