"A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."

"Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness."

"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places."

"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."

"What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?"

"The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner."

"The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written."

"One reads alone, even in another's presence."

"Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?"