A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.

I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language.

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves

It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?

I will start out this evening with an assertion: fantasy is a place where it rains.

Peace be upon you, for you have persevered! How excellent, then, this fulfilment in the hereafter!

You can regain your inner peace with a daily prayer.

The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.

When each elder or pastor has his will aligned with the Lord's, we waste no time arguing for our own.

The best strategy is a balance between having a deliberate one, and a flexible, or emergent strategy.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

I think if you'd had television cameras at Gettysburg, this would be two nations today. People would not have put up with that carnage if they saw it up close. We'd have elected McClellan in 1864.

Steady labor with the hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's style, both of speaking and writing.

Quality is a choice. Choose to make it better.

I think I'm actually more vulnerable than people imagine.