“First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.”

“You should always have 2 books...the one you're reading and the one you're writing.”

“Books. They are lined up on shelves or stacked on a table. There they are wrapped up in their jackets, lines of neat print on nicely bound pages. They look like such orderly, static things. Then you, the reader come along. You open the book jacket, and it can be like opening the gates to an unknown city, or opening the lid of a treasure chest. You read the first word and you're off on a journey of exploration and discovery.”

“[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing.”

“When you're a kid, and you first start reading grown-up books, it's like looking in a window at night at people who think no one is around.”

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”