He who writes books that aim to convince is a comedian, too, just a comedian. What has he got to offer others, apart from chains, still more chains? Fiction never liberated anyone. No one ever...

There is no such thing as self-awareness. Imagine thought retreating into itself to think about itself. It would be easier to imagine a revolver bullet extracting itself from its victim’s wound and re-entering the barrel....

[M]ay not literature (and, in particular, fiction) be considered a desperate and permanently thwarted effort to produce a unique form of expression? Something like a cry, perhaps, a cry that, somehow, inexplicably contains all the...

Un miros de sărac, un miros de violență, de necesitatea de a parveni.

All words are possible, then, all names. They rain down, all these words, they disintegrate into a powdery avalanche. Belched from the volcano’s mouth, they spurt in to the sky, then fall again. In the...

Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks,...

Nights are long when it’s cold and you’re waiting for a train.

The earth is neither fabulous nor paradisal. And therefore it is not hell.

I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it’s true, I really did. I shall have failed, that’s all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people...

[W]hat is one to say of the writer who lies when he writes that he is lying?

The fact is, that for the Huichol, and for all those who refuse, who are in flight, words and things are precisely what language does not speak about. Language is a natural act which implies...

Quelque chose brûle en moi. J’attends et je n’attends pas. C’est peut-être dans cette rupture, dans cet instant, entre les deux pulsions, l’une qui va vers l’infini du oui, l’autre vers l’infini du non, qu’est...

Horror is not unimaginable, it has neither the face of a monster nor the bat-wings of a demon. It is calm and tranquil, and it is durable, lasting whole days and nights, months; years, perhaps....

Most people don’t know how to ask the right questions. Mondo knew how to ask questions, just at the right time, when you weren’t expecting it. People paused for a few seconds, they stopped thinking...

La nuit, tout sent bon”, disait Mondo.”C’est parce qu’on ne voit pas”, disait Thi Chin.”on sent mieux, et on entend mieux quand on ne voit pas”.

You don’t mean to say that Hogan has turned into a woman? Why, yes, that’s him all right, you can recognize him by the fact that he has two legs, two arms, and an indecipherable...

They were the men and the women of the sand, of the wind, of the light, of the night. They appeared as in a dream, at the crest of a dune, as if they were...

I thought that to get to know a desert it was enough to have been there. I thought that to have seen the dogs dying along the Cholula road, or to have seen the eyes...

Ils étaient les hommes et les femmes du sable, du vent, de la lumière, de la nuit. Ils étaient apparus, comme dans un rêve, en haut d’une dune, comme s’ils étaient nés du ciel sans...