The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of one's being to be experienced, explored, enriched and, thereby, educated.
Tiny details imperceptible to us decide everything!
It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.
How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no longer make out the words and my mind began to wander, and how secure have I felt seated at the desk in my house in the dark night, just watching the tip of my pencil in the lamplight following its shadow, as if of its own accord and with perfect fidelity, while that shadow moved regularly from left to right, line by line, over the ruled paper.
We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.
I suppose it is submerged realities that give to dreams their curious air of hyper-reality. But perhaps there is something else as well, something nebulous, gauze-like, through which everything one sees in a dream seems, paradoxically, much clearer. A pond becomes a lake, a breeze becomes a storm, a handful of dust is a desert, a grain of sulphur in the blood is a volcanic inferno. What manner of theater is it, in which we are at once playwright, actor, stage manager, scene painter and audience?
No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding.
I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.
I didn't know what to say when someone's given you a small free kiss in the dark.
The best New York in the world is driving down the [Pacific Coast Highway] listening to the Velvet Underground. That's the best time I've ever been to New York.
Practically, the desirable situation ought to be one in which any reasonably responsible person willing to accept available employment can find a job paying a living wage within 48 hours.