“You may win your heart’s desire, but in the end you’re cheated of it by death.”

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.

Man’s memory shapes Its own Eden within.

You can’t measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.

I never reread what I’ve written. I’m far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I’ve done.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

One concept corrupts and confuses the others. I am not speaking of the Evil whose limited sphere is ethics; I am speaking of the infinite.

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

Art is endless like a river flowing, passing, yet remaining.

I had always thought of Paradise / In form and image as a library.

Death is just infinity closing in.

A writer should have another lifetime to see if he’s appreciated.

For me, beauty is a physical sensation, something we feel with our whole body. It is not the result of judgement. We do not arrive at it by way of rules. We either feel beauty or we don’t.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

A system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one of such aspects.

The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

Eve left Adam, to meet the Devil in private.

I never, ever cheated [in medical school]. I don’t condone cheating. But I would sometimes spread misinformation. This is a great tactic. Misinformation can be very important.

People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?

I am not a cheat and never have been.

When you’re in the public eye, it’s wrong to cheat on someone, unless you’re very careful. If you’re normal and no one’s going to know, then do it.

I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which they break.

I was unfaithful, I had affairs, I cheated.