Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!

Tact consists in knowing how far to go too far

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?