He possesses the minimum sensibility necessary for his intelligence not to be merely mathematical, the minimum a human being needs so that it can be proven with a thermometer that he's not dead.

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel.

It’s stupid, but it’s human, and that’s how it is.

the Great Vaccination — the vaccination against the stupidity of the intelligentsia.

in exceptional circumstances — exceptional in that all circumstances in life are exceptional, especially those which are nothing in themselves and come to be everything in their results.

Nothing: a landscape, a glass of wine, a little loveless love, and the vague sadness caused by our understanding nothing and having lost the little we're given.

I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, “Are you at peace with yourself?” and he answered, “No, I’m at peace.” It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one.

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."]

We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.

To me, a faith in Jesus Christ that is not aligned with the poor ... it's nothing.

With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.

Everyone is now a potential terrorist.

I believe in health care reform. I don't believe in the way this bill was passed.

Actually in the moment in which the idea has life, when it's listened to read, engaged with, acted on stage, it gains another dimension, it becomes three dimensional.

I suppose I wanted to have my cake and eat it. But then again, what were you going to do with your cake if not eat it? Frame it? Use it as a sachet in your underwear drawer?

L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" - find out how he feels about astrology.