“A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous onesbut because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture.”

“It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.”

“This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .”

“What remains uncertain, rather, is whether this gain in evidence and (we might as well say it) splendor is due to the slow retreat of the sky, which as it moves away, sinks deeper and deeper into darkness, or whether on the contrary, it is the moon that is coming forward, collecting the previously scattered light and depriving the sky of it, concentrating it all in the round mouth of its funnel.”

“The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.”

“If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects," I said somewhat imperiously, because I wanted to change the subjects and also because a natural inclination does truly lead me to recognise my moods in the motionless suffering of things.”

“You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.”