“I ask of any God, of any gods, that if they give immortality, I hope to be granted oblivion also.”

Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills.

In my next life I will try to commit more errors.

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.

Reality favors symmetry.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.

Creativity is suspended between memory and forgetting.

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist – I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don’t have to solve that problem. It’s up to God, if any.

I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.

Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but hypotheses may not.

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?

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

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.