A library’s ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste’s stall, a place for trouvailles.
History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.
In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty .
The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.
When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.
When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us-and rightly-that we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been ashamed.
The poets did not win; the philosophers surrendered.
The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Not that the incredulous person doesn’t believe in anything. It’s just that he doesn’t believe in everything.
Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence.
You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another. You cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.
He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.
A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.
But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh.
Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene.
A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.
I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
The Fundamental Principle that governs – or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation.
In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.