1. “The secret of survival is a defective imagination.”
2. “The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language.”
3. “The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.”
4. “No two things are the same, the equals sign a scandal.”
5. “Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not exercise volition. They are easily born and as easily killed off.”
6. “Life is tragic but it’s equally comic.”
7. “The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
8. “I don’t make a distinction between men and women. To me they are just people.”
9. “It’s great people still care about books and it’s great you can still fashion a life from literature.”
10. “We think we’re living in the present, but we’re really living in the past.”
11. “A man is not much if he can’t depend on himself and nothing if others can’t depend on him.”
12. “A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.”
13. “Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.”
14. “If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.”
15. “In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.”
