Reading . . . Is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.

Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on meand treating me badly.

Novels include padding; I think padding may be an essential part of the novel, for all I know.

There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others.I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.

There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations.