“Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.

Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

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.

Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.

It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

How cruel, your veins are full of ice-water and mine are boiling.

In one consort there sat cruel revenge and rancorous despite, disloyal treason and heart-burning hate.

Love is not full of pity (as men say) But deaf and cruel, where he means to pray.

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.