Science does not aim to cover exhaustively the whole of reality, but to construct systems and concepts which will perhaps — and it is a big perhaps — allow man to act on the world.

Observation in 1975, quoted in French in Jean Ricardou (ed.) Robbe-Grillet: Analyse, Théorie, vol. 2 (Paris: Union Générale d'Editions, 1976) p. 418; English translation in John Fletcher, Alain Robbe-Grillet (London: Methuen, 1983) p. 16