“i walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”

“Boast of QuietnessWritings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like tounderstand them.Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.They speak of humanity.My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.They speak of homeland.My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.Time is living me.More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.My name is someone and anyone.I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”

“There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to discover anything.”

“SomeoneA man worn down by time,a man who does not even expect death(the proofs of death are statisticsand everyone runs the riskof being the first immortal),a man who has learned to express thanksfor the days' modest alms:sleep, routine, the taste of water,an unsuspected etymology,a Latin or Saxon verse,the memory of a woman who left himthirty years ago nowwhom he can call to mind without bitterness,a man who is aware that the presentis both future and oblivion,a man who has betrayedand has been betrayed,may feel suddenly, when crossing the street,a mysterious happinessnot coming from the side of hopebut from an ancient innocence,from his own root or from some diffuse god.He knows better than to look at it closely,for there are reasons more terrible than tigerswhich will prove to himthat wretchedness is his duty,but he accepts humblythis felicity, this glimmer.Perhaps in death when the dustis dust, we will be foreverthis undecipherable root,from which will grow forever,serene or horrible,or solitary heaven or hell.”

“What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

“If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his readers to believe it.”

“Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.”