Tradition remains alive only when we struggle with it.

Art cannot progress by sticking to what is already familiar.

In the end, time is the best ally of poets. It clarifies their works and makes them accessible to an ever widening circle of readers.

The solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.

The demand that poetry be immediately understandable to everyone is truly absurd.

The spirit of the age is not synonymous with what the public likes.

The public, regardless of its social origin, likes, above all, that which is easily accessible.

The age of sages is past; the age of specialists has come.

Talent--that is to say, the ability to see the world in a unique way--matures and grows in isolation.

Solitude is an essential element of poetry.

Environment grinds us, forces us to adjust, and--consciously or not--kills our most precious possession: that something which enables us to speak with ourselves and with God.

Magic is just science we don't understand yet.

Once in everyone's life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half-asleep.

The first reaction is, get defensive. Second reaction is, what are we going to do about it?

But for the first time in many years, I get to sleep in my own bed every night. I haven't done that, literally, in years. It seems like such a small thing, but it is so nice.

I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.

Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable.

Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in the universe, except that everyone else is still here.

I do believe that almost everything I do is based on my feelings, not on my intellect. Though But we won't chase ourselves up the particular sentiment, or we'll get lost.

Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant.