Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon the next.

Perfect behaviour is born of complete indifference.

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

We never remember days, only moments.

There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first.

If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.