I am attracted to fantastic writing, and fantastic reading, of course. But I think things that we call fantastic may be real, in the sense of being real symbols.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

The original is unfaithful to the translation.

If you are going somewhere. Go, only if you're coming back.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

There should be more booing in shops and restaurants and places like that when when the service is bad. If you've had a poor breakfast in a hotel, you should put your knife and fork down and boo.

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.

There are only two types of girls: the type that you marry and the type that you play around with and then break up with. But you're somewhere in between.

Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory.

Historical costumes from the 18th and 19th centuries look so complicated, but when you see the patterns, it's very systematic. I've always been impressed by how the patterns economize the fabric.

The Seeker himself becomes the knower. The thing to be known is already there. There is nothing to be known afresh. More-over there are no two things. There is only the seer, the knower.

Don't find a reason to smile. Find a way.

America's development began with a large-scale ethnic cleansing, unprecedented in human history.