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I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood.

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When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarna

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A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes...more

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The story of two dreams is a coincidence, a line drawn by chance, like the shapes of lions or horses that are sometimes formed by clouds.

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

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A writer always begins by being too complicated—he’s playing at several games at once.

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When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.", The New Yorker, July 7, 1986]

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I do not know whether music knows how to despair over music, or marble over marble, but literature is an art which knows how to prophesize the time in...more

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The three of them knew it. She was Kafka’s mistress. Kafka had dreamt her. The three of them knew it. He was Kafka’s friend. Kafka had dreamt him. The...more

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Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, a...more

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Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not.

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Things, events, that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies make us stop in wonder - and yet one thing, or an infinite number of things, di...more

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It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a...more

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There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory—the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects ...more

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Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened.