Poetry… it consumed Sappho’s young years, it nourished Goethe’s old age. Drug, the Greeks called it, both poison and medicine.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

With all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the U.S.A. and China.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.