The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.

Women have seen that they have locked themselves up with feminist writing.

One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read.

Poetry is what makes the invisible appear.

We're swallowed up only when we are willing for it to happen.

It's the duty of all novelists, all painters, all musicians, all people who try to make art move: to look for something they feel authentically, without paying attention to styles.

The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading.

Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium.

It's a question of not copying the masters, to look for something, good or bad, for oneself. To enter this liberated state of mind, one cannot copy the others.

Literature is always trying to show other parts of this immense universe in which we live. It's endless. I'm sure there will be other writers who will discover new worlds.

You might get some serial killers who are born with a chip missing, but for the most part I don't think anyone is born bad.

It's impossible for me to lose because I won't quit!

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal.

Choosing one's leaders is an affirmation that the person making the choice has inherent worth.

There definitely is that element of guys who like to party and have a good time and... putting off for as long as possible the idea that they'll actually have to settle down

Being a woman anywhere is dangerous.

I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.

Ya know, Hitler was this evil, evil man. But with the World Bank and Israel manipulating America, he might have been on to something.