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

Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.

Reading is solitude. One reads alone, even in another's presence.

A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

All that can be done is for each one of us to invent our own ideal library of our classics; and I would say that one half of it should consist of books we have read and that have meant something for us, and the other half of books which we intend to read and which we suppose might mean something to us. We should also leave a section of empty spaces for surprises and chance discoveries.

To plan a book — or an escape — the first thing to know is what to exclude.

I read, therefore it writes

This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is being used merely to create the occasional pleasing contrast to the general ballooning of verbiage.