'I think therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches |
A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations. |
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality. |
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time. |
A wave of anger washed over me, anger against myself, at my age at the time, that stupid lyrically age, when a man is too great a riddle to himself to be interested in the riddles outside himself and when other people are mere walking mirrors in which he is amazed to find his own emotions, his own worth. |
A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea. |
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual. |
Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end. |
Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation. |
Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation. |
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace. |
Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other. |
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence? |
Happiness is the longing for repetition. |
He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him. |