“Le lecteur, lui non plus, ne voit pas les choses du dehors. Il est dans le labyrinthe aussi.”

Memory belongs to the imagination.

The art of the novel, however, has fallen into such a state of stagnation – a lassitude acknowledged and discussed by the whole of critical opinion – that it is hard to imagine such an art can survive for long without some radical change.

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.

the world is neither meaningful, nor absurd. it quite simply is, and that, in any case, is what is so remarkable about it.

What do young girls dream of? Of the knife and of blood.

Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things.

The reader [as well as the main character] does not view the work from outside. He too is in the labyrinth.

Premie’ re approximation: j’e cris pour de truire, en les de crivant avec pre cision, des monstres nocturnes qui menacent d’envahir ma vie e veille e. First general point: I write to destroy, by describing exactly the nocturnal monsters that threaten to invade my waking life.

There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: ‘You see,’ he says, ‘now that’s formalism.

It is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention.

To many, the solution seems simple enough: such a change being impossible, the art of the novel is dying.

They play gangsters, nowadays, just like boys. They organize rackets. They plan holdups and practice karate. They will rape defenseless adolescents. They wear pants…

Deux me’ tresou un peu plusse parent donc l’homme de la femme. Two metres, or a little more, separates a man from a woman.

On n’e chappe pas a’ son sort. One cannot escape destiny.

To tell the truth, girls are no longer the way they used to be.

I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn’t even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

I didn’t take many penalties, but I never missed one.

We are beginning to see that money, after all, is not the main thing. The real values cannot be bought and sold.

Making a film is so hard that if you don’t have your main actors going along with the ride with the rest of the crew it can make your life very difficult.

I have done almost every human activity inside a taxi which does not require main drainage.

Art attests to what is inhuman in man.