The greatest harm that you can do unto the envious, is to do well.
Salt and the center of the world have to be there, in that spot on the tablecloth.
I have never described this to you before, not so much, I don't think, from lack of truthfulness as that, just naturally, one is not going to explain to people at large that from time to time one vomits up a small rabbit.
You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room.
The short-story writer knows that he can't proceed cumulatively, that time is not his ally. His only solution is to work vertically, heading up or down in literary space.
Why have we had to invent Eden, to live submerged in the nostalgia of a lost paradise, to make up utopias, propose a future for ourselves?
Literature is. . . a game, but it's a game one can put one's life into.
For me beauty is valued more than anything - the beauty that is manifest in a curved line or in an act of creativity.
He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy - those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.
If only we could be old and sick while we're still young and healthy enough to put up with it!
There's something really emotional about not having any sound. That allows, I think, the audience to participate more actively and kind of imagine what are they talking about there?