Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: You can't deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching all your reactions, and steal your secret by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.

You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.

You don't remember days, you remember moments.

It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?

When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.

Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

The only way to escape the abyss is to look at it, gauge it, sound it out and descend into it.