“If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore...”

“When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.”

“The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.”

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”

“For a writer, only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.”

“...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.”

“After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.”