"Stop being astounded by the realization that sex is the object of such misunderstanding and of such automatic clumsiness that it implies either a universal loathing or a universal veneration (which are much the same thing)."

"Nombres est écrit avant mai 1968, coïncidence improbable mais profonde."

"The world belongs to women. In other words, to death. But everyone lies about it."

"Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race, by instinct, imagination, and souvenir, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France."

"The critic who attempted to carry on 's ideas, who developed them in his own way and added his own distinct and remarkable contribution, was Hippolyte Taine. As an influence on all literary output since their time, the effect of the ideas of these two men is still extraordinary ..."

"M. Taine, looking as usual for formulas and labels, says that the most complete description of Balzac is that he was a man of business—a man of business in debt."

"[Concerning the love La Fontaine felt for animals] He follows their emotions, he represents their reasonings, he becomes tender, he becomes gay, he participates in their feelings. The fact is, he lived in them. […] The animals contain all the materials of man-sensations, judgments, images."

"J'ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure."

"The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies."

"One puts in the hands of each adult a ballot, but on the back of each soldier a knapsack: with what promises of massacre and bankruptcy for the Twentieth Century, with what exasperation of ill will and distrust, with what loss of wholesome effort, by what a perversion of productive discoveries, accompanied by what an improvement in the means of destruction, by what recoil toward the inferior and unhealthy forms of the old combative societies, by what a backward step toward egoistic and brutal instincts, toward the sentiments, manner and morality of ancient cities and barbaric tribes, we know all too well."

"By making this chair five times as expensive, three times heavier, half as comfortable, and only a fraction as beautiful, an architect can make a good name for himself."

"Cortázar is the one who is closest to my way of understanding the act of writing. And nearer to my heart. I admire Carlos Fuentes on the opposite extreme of the equation. That is why I wrote a book on both of them, Entrecruzamientos: Cortázar/Fuentes."

"No government functions without the grease of corruption."

"[The Mexican revolution] was a break with the past to recover the past. We were trying to deny we had an Indian and a black and a Spanish past. The Mexican Revolution accepted all heritages. It allowed Mexico to be mestizo."

"Can you imagine me coming to this country to blow up a post office? I told them, "My bombs are my books.""

"I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them."

"The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you."

"Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre."

"A tropical Mussolini"

"If the Soviet Union can give up the Brezhnev Doctrine for the Sinatra Doctrine, the United States can give up the James Monroe Doctrine for the Marilyn Monroe Doctrine: Let's all go to bed wearing the perfume we like best."

"The facade of the Conquest, severe yet jocund, with one foot in the dead Old World and the other in the New."

"What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others."

"I was influenced by all of them-by García Márquez, by Carlos Fuentes, [[Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, José Donoso, so many of them-some of my own generation, like Eduardo Galeano. It's easy for me to write because I don't have to invent anything. They already found a voice, a way of telling us to ourselves, so it's easy."

"I admire him a lot. He has done a lot to bring the Latin American situation to the American consciousness."

"His blend of sensitivity and detachment, elegance, wit, and learning, had a profound influence on later Roman poets, especially Catullus, Ovid, and Propertius (the last thought of himself as the Roman Callimachus), and through them on the whole European literary tradition."

"The most outstanding intellect of this generation, the greatest poet that the Hellenistic age produced, and historically one of the most important figures in the development of Graeco-Roman (and hence European) literature."

"The Graces, three erewhile, are three no more; A fourth is come with perfume sprinkled o'er. 'Tis Berenice blest and fair; were she Away the Graces would no Graces be."

"O Charidas, what of the under world? Great darkness. And what of the resurrection? A lie. And Pluto? A fable; we perish utterly."

"Set a thief to catch a thief."

"Ὅμηρον ἐξ Ὁμήρου σαφηνίζειν"

"[...] ὅσσα τ' ὀδόντωνἔνδοθι νείαιράν τ' εἰς ἀχάριστον ἔδυ, καὶ τῶν οὐδὲν ἔμεινεν ἐς αὔριον· ὅσσα δ' ἀκουαῖς εἰσεθέμην, ἔτι μοι μοῦνα πάρεστι τάδε."

"Εἰπέ τις, Ἡράκλειτε, τεὸν μόρον ἐς δέ με δάκρυ ἤγαγεν ἐμνήσθην δ᾿ ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι ἠέλιον λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. ..."

"Nothing unattested do I sing."

"Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore; The Muses are ten, the Graces are four; Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face; She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace."

"A big book is a big misfortune."

"Here sleeps Saon, of Acanthus, son of Dicon, a holy sleep: say not that the good die."

"Ma cos'è mai la storia, diceva spesso don Ferrante, senza la politica? Una guida che cammina, cammina, con nessuno dietro che impari la strada, e per conseguenza butta via i suoi passi; come la politica senza la storia è uno che cammina senza guida."

"The truly historical character – also and perhaps even above all from the point of view of civil, social and ethical history: “national identity”, as we would say today – of Camporesi's reading of Artusi is particularly highlighted and, so to speak, summarised in the famous statement by Camporesi that “”'Science in the Kitchen'“ did more for national unification than ”'I Promessi Sposi . Artusi's tastes, in fact, succeeded in creating a code of national identification where Manzoni's stylistic and phonetic features failed."

"Non sempre ciò che vien dopo è progresso."

"All'avvocato bisogna raccontar le cose chiare: a noi tocca poi a imbrogliarle."

"È uno de' vantaggi di questo mondo, quello di poter odiare ed esser odiati, senza conoscersi."

"Ma la pratica generale ha voluto che [la condizione di non dir nulla a nessuno] obblighi soltanto a non confidare il segreto che ad un amico egualmente fidato, e imponendogli la condizione medesima. Così d'amico fidato in amico fidato, il segreto gira e gira per quella immensa catena, tanto che giunge all'orecchio di colui o di coloro a cui il primo che ha parlato intendeva appunto di non lasciarlo giunger mai."

"No nineteenth-century writer could have written this nineteenth-century tale; but few twentieth-century writers could have handled its simplicities in the way this one does."

"Un palazzo del quale si conoscessero tutte le stanze non era degno di essere abitato."

"Un contadino che mi dà il suo pezzo di pecorino mi fa un regalo più grande di Giulio Làscari quando m’invita a pranzo. Il guaio è che il pecorino mi dà la nausea; e così non resta che la gratitudine che non si vede e il naso arricciato dal disgusto che si vede fin troppo."

"Che cosa se ne farebbe il Senato di me, di un legislatore inesperto cui manca la facoltà d'ingannare sé stesso, questo requisito essenziale per chi voglia guidare gli altri?"

"Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi."

"Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti Gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore, continueremo a crederci il sale della terra."

"I giovani sentono i dolori più acerbamente dei vecchi: per questi l'uscita di sicurezza è più vicina."

"His great novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) has certainly enlarged my life – an unusual experience for a life which is well on in its eighties. Reading and rereading it has made me realize how many ways there are of being alive, how many doors there are, close to one, which someone else's touch may open."