There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate.

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.

Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have at the moment of commemoration.

Rather than ask, What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time? I should like to ask, What is its position in them.

The work of memory collapses time.