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.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death.

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

Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will.

There comes a day when, for someone who has persecuted us, we feel only indifference, a weariness at his stupidity. Then we forgive him.

Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.