Rzeczywiście, często się zdarza, że idzie się do biblioteki, bo chce się książkę o znanym tytule, ale główną funkcją biblioteki, a przynajmniej funkcją biblioteki w moim domu i w domach wszystkich znajomych, jakich możemy odwiedzać, jest odkrywanie książek, których istnienia się nie podejrzewało, a które, jak się okazuje, są dla nas niezwykle ważne.

L’essere umano è davvero una creatura straordinaria. Ha scoperto il fuoco, edificato città, scritto magnifiche poesie, dato interpretazioni del mondo, inventato mitologie etc… Ma allo stesso tempo non ha smesso di fare la guerra ai suoi simili, non ha smesso di ingannarsi, di distruggere l’ambiente circostante. La somma algebrica fra vigore intellettuale e coglioneria dà...

American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroadstations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an Americanpercolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes,served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like purespring water,...

315Beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages… a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. A beautiful nose shouldn’t be longer than that or shorter than that, on the contrary, an ugly nose can be as long as the one of Pinocchio, or as big as the trunk...

We live for books.

Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.

The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.

When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?

What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the...

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love...

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader.Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that...

From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola

Is it possible to say “It was a beautiful morning at the end of November” without feeling like Snoopy?

Omnia mundi creaturaquasi liber et pictura nobis estin speculum.

How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.

If two things don’t fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that’s credulity

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

For architecture, among all the arts, is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the order of the universe, which the ancients called “kosmos,” that is to say ornate, since it is like a great animal on whom there shine the perfection and the proportion of all its members.

The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means…

I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weaker. Beautiful and clear as it had been, the morning (as the day approached the completion of its first half) was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain, covering it with a...

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Any fact becomes important when it’s connected to another.

They keep saying that their kingdom is not of this world, then take everything they can lay their hands on. Civilization will never reach perfection until the last stone of the last church has fallen on the last priest, and the earth is rid of that evil lot.

Die Menschen tun das Böse nie so vollständig und begeistert, wie wenn sie es aus religiöser Überzeugung tun.

People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.

I was upset. I had always believed logic was a universal weapon and now I realized how its validity depended on the way it was employed.

In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine...

I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.

For three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light, and in fact we call beautiful those things of definite color.- William

Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.

A te închipui un element necesar în ordinea universului echivalează, pentru noi, oamenii cu lecturi serioase, cu ceea ce e superstiția pentru analfabeți. Nu se schimbă lumea cu ideile. Persoanele cu puține idei sunt mai puțin supuse erorii, se iau după ceea ce fac toți și nu deranjează pe nimeni, și reușesc, se îmbogățesc, ajung...

All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, ‘Sir, write me, I am beautiful.

I felt like poisoning a monk.

the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.

At t de mare e puterea adevărului care, precum binele, se răsp ndește de la sine.

Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.

E nevoie de un dușman ca să-i dai poporului o speranță. Cineva a spus că patriotismul e ultimul refugiu al canaliilor: cine nu are principii morale se înfășoară de obicei într-un steag, iar bastarzii fac întotdeauna apel la puritatea stirpei lor. Identitatea națională este ultima resursă a dezmoșteniților. Or, simțul identității se întemeiază pe ură,...

We’ll have to see,” Belbo said. He rummaged in his drawer and took out some sheets of paper. “Potio-section…” He looked at me, saw my bewilderment. “Potio-section, as everybody knows, of course, is the art of slicing soup. No, no,” he said to Diotallevi. “It’s not the department, it’s a subject, like Mechanical Avunculogratulation or...

Then we are living in a place abandoned by God,” I said, disheartened.”Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?” William asked me, looking down from his great height.