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

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.

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.

A writer’s work is the product of laziness.

I’ve always been a very rebellious, philosophical person.

So my mother set the foundation for my appreciation for nature and my empathy for other people.

Their silence is enough praise.

You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent, your wife till she’s joined a woman’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

If you want to create vital, long-lasting love, you must become a master of verbal & nonverbal appreciation.

Spare yourself from seeking love, approval, or appreciation-from anyone. And watch what happens in reality, just for fun.

Which led me into a new appreciation of middle [William Butler ] Yeats, of the short three-beat line and forward-driving syntax, and that paid in, in turn to a poem like Casualty in Field Work.