“I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.”

“What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so o...”

“You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.”

“If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.”

“Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.”

“Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire.”

“A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding.”

“My father always said that too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech.”

“Words', he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wantin...”