The writer must proudly consent to bear his own date, knowing that there are no masterpieces in eternity, but only works in history, and that they survive only to the degree that they have left the past behind them and heralded the future.

The word “avant-garde,” for example, despite its note of impartiality, generally serves to dismiss-as though by a shrug of the shoulders-any work that risks giving a bad conscience to the literature of mass consumption.

When a novelist has “something to say,” they mean a message. It has political connotations, or a religious message, or a moral prescription. It means “commitment,” as used by Sartre and other fellow-travelers. They are saying that the writer has a world view, a sort of truth that he wishes to communicate, and that his writing has an ulterior significance. I am against this.

There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: ‘You see,’ he says, ’now that’s formalism.

Premie' re approximation: j'e cris pour de truire, en les de crivant avec pre cision, des monstres nocturnes qui menacent d'envahir ma vie e veille e. First general point: I write to destroy, by describing exactly the nocturnal monsters that threaten to invade my waking life.

On n'e chappe pas a' son sort. One cannot escape destiny.

Deux me' tresou un peu plusse parent donc l'homme de la femme. Two metres, or a little more, separates a man from a woman.

Et une fois de plus je m'avan c° ais le long de ces me" mes couloirs, marchant depuis des jours, depuis des mois, depuis des anne es, a' votre rencontre. And one more time, I advanced along these same hallways, walking for days, for months, for years, to meet you.

There is a famous Russian cartoon in which a hippopotamus, in the bush, points out a zebra to another hippopotamus: 'You see,' he says, 'now that’s formalism.

Memory belongs to the imagination.