How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.

A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing--, the no one's rose.

Reality is not simply there, it does not simply exist: it must be sought out and won.

Poetry is a sort of homecoming.

The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

Don't sign your name between worlds, surmount the manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, learn to live.

There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

We are told that when Hölderlin went 'mad,' he constantly repeated, 'Nothing is happening to me, nothing is happening to me.'

German poetry is going in a very different direction from French poetry.... Its language has become more sober, more factual. It distrusts "beauty." It tries to be truthful.

To truly be satisfied in life, you must invest your time into doing what you were born to do instead of wasting your time trying to impress a boss or a company doing a job that you were not born for.

What a glut of books! Who can read them?

Patience has its limits. Take it too far and it's cowardice.

War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.

It is very hard to be in love with someone who no longer loves you, but it is far worse to be loved by someone with whom you are no longer in love.

So, as one sees, I by no means deprive my world of stubborn reality, if I merely call it a world of ideas.

Man can make only the rules. He cannot make the laws, which are the laws of nature. It is the understanding of these laws that enables a student to draw.

Dallas is a positive, get-it done city.

It often comes down to the people that you get to work with, and to match or enhance their creation. I tend to fall in love with whatever project we are involved in at the moment.

In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on.