Writing tends to cheer me; it always soothes my spirit and blesses me with the gift of an innocent, tender, childlike day. It is the sensation of having spent a few hours in my homeland, with my customs, free whims, my total freedom.

For me, religiosity is ... the constant remembrance of the presence of the soul.

Let the earth look at me, and bless me, for now I am fecund and sacred, like the palms and the furrows.

My grief and my smile begin in your face, my son.

I write poetry because I can’t disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a long time I’ve been the servant of the song that comes, that appears and can’t be buried away. How to seal myself up now?…It no longer matters to me who receives what I submit. What I carry out is, in that respect, greater and deeper than I, I am merely the channel.

There is the joy of being healthy and fair, but there is overall the beauty, the immense joy of being useful.

The poet is an untier of knots, and love without words is a knot, and it drowns.