I have often heard that the novel is dead. But I see novels produced, I don't know how many a week, in France. I have the impression it's carrying along quite well.

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.

We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

Intelligence is knowing what’s required of you

Be clear, conscious and circumspect about your dreams. Claim your blessings with your mouth.

The perfect journey is never finished, the goal is always just across the next river, round the shoulder of the next mountain. There is always one more track to follow, one more mirage to explore.

Enlightenment is something that you've been resisting to happen. It’s not something you have to struggle to make happen. The key is not to get in the way! Just allow it occur.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

I've always been a big thinker that the more international competition that we create through sports the better relationships we'll have with countries.

Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow that it passes through.

There IS a difference between poetry and prose! Poems should be sonically charged and new to the ear.

God didn't come down and tell me; I had to find it out through many years of experience. The work came first; the inspiration came later.

People eat meat and think they will become as strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.