Pierre Bayard

“[…] there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by…

— Pierre Bayard

“The paradox of reading is that the path toward ourselves passes through books, but that this must remain a passage. It is…

— Pierre Bayard

“[…] a given text may seem fictional or actual depending on the context in which we encounter it. The same is true…

— Pierre Bayard

“As may be seen, there is only one sensible piece of advice to give to those who find themselves having to talk…

— Pierre Bayard

“A great number of elements in the characters’ lives, both psychic and factual, are not communicated to us. […] These characters, I…

— Pierre Bayard

“(in which, along with Montaigne, we raise the question of whether a book you have read and completely forgotten, and which you…

— Pierre Bayard

“Criticism demands infinitely more culture than artistic creation.”

— Pierre Bayard

“Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and…

— Pierre Bayard

“Our relation to books is a shadowy space haunted by the ghosts of memory, and the real value of books lies in…

— Pierre Bayard

“Fictional characters exert a great deal of influence over our choices in love by representing inaccessible ideals to which we try to…

— Pierre Bayard

“To speak without shame about books we haven’t read, we would thus do well to free ourselves of the oppressive image of…

— Pierre Bayard

“The title of the work, its place in the collective library, the nature of the person who tells us about it, the…

— Pierre Bayard

“Our relationship with literary characters, at least to those that exercise a certain attraction over us, rests in fact on a denial.…

— Pierre Bayard

“It is the reader who comes to complete the work and to close, albeit temporarily, the world that it opens, and the…

— Pierre Bayard

“if you want to be able to talk about a place, the best thing to do is stay at home.”

— Pierre Bayard

“When we talk about books…we are talking about our approximate recollections of books… What we preserve of the books we read—whether we…

— Pierre Bayard

“The books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other…

— Pierre Bayard