The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, of his own condition.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.

Like ultraviolet rays memory shows to each man in the book of life a script that invisibly and prophetically glosses the text.

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.

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.

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