Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. |
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. |
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read. |
My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out. |
Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone |
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. |
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. |
Reality is not always probable, or likely. |
The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb. |
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing. |
The original is unfaithful to the translation. |
The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. |
Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face. |
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. |
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal. |