Loving someone is a loss of freedom - but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else.

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

Venice, that capital city of dream and intrigue, that double city (one above and seemingly solid, one below, wavering and reflected in the waters), which never disappoints.

Sex doesn't disappear, it just changes forms.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

Young people never believe in the possibility of their own deaths. That's one reason old men can send them to war.