I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice... but because of his omnipresent images.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.

Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.