“The history of literature is very far from being one of simple progress.”

“Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far.”

“I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.”

“I just used a very simple way to explain what are deep ideas, and why can't that be literature?”

“The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.”

“A simple cup of tea is far from a simple matter.”