Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

All disgust is originally disgust at touching.

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.

All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.

The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.

The work of memory collapses time.

Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic slice of truth, wisdom, is dying out.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information -- hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original.

I think we will have a boy baby and he will be born on the 20th of August. Everyone else has a girl baby and at times I don't believe I should mind having a little Phyllis Dawn but Dearest wants a boy and I do.

In fact I have nightmares about having children. I want to carry a baby and feel the life within me and in my dream, I do. But every time after it's born, there's this incredible fear, this pounding pulse of fear. It's a real bad nightmare.

Being a father, well, I don't know if this is a change, but it makes me want to get out of here faster. Get off the clock. Just 'cause the baby is my reason for living, my reason for coming to work.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

I don't like my hockey sticks touching other sticks, and I don't like them crossing one another, and I kind of have them hidden in the corner. I put baby powder on the ends. I think it's essentially a matter of taking care of what takes care of you.

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!'

Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.

I didn't have any problem bonding with Honey, but I was plagued with insecurities about my ability to bring up my baby.

I got introduced to audiobooks because of having a baby.

I've been chased through airports with a screaming baby because the photographers are ruthless, and they want the picture.