So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really, as they say, the enjoyment of new and different things, and not, instead, the joy of expel… - Italo Calvino

A conversation with Miss Zwida would lead me inevitably to talk about seashells, and I cannot decide what attitude to take, whether to pretend absolute ignorance or to call on a remote experience now vague; it is my relationship with my life, consisting of things never concluded and half erased, that the subject of seashells forces me to contemplate; hence the uneasiness that finally puts me to flight.

في القراءة، خُذها عني، ينبغي أن تبقى غافلاً، وفي أقصى درجات التأهب معاً، كما لو أنني شارد الذهن لكني مرهف السمع

The art of writing tales consists in an ability to draw the rest of life from the little one has understood of it; but life begins again at the end of the page, and one realises that one has knew nothing whatsoever.