Between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.
There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize.
The best actors do not let the wheels show.
Dogs are our link to paradise.
The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.
Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.
The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.
In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
A constant interrogation.
A single metaphor can give birth to love.
How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and began beating him up?
Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.
Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo.
Speak truth to power.
What I need most of all is certainty.
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.
Sad company is bad company.
No love can survive muteness.