I think the Swedish Academy wished to manifest its solidarity with the living spirit of Greece today.

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

You spoke about things they couldn't see and so they laughed. Yet to row up the dark river against the current, to take the unknown road blindly, stubbornly, and to search for words rooted like the knotted olive tree- let them laugh. And to yearn for the other world to inhabit today's suffocating loneliness, this ravaged present- let them be.

For poetry there exists neither large countries nor small. Its domain is in the heart of all men.

I think the Swedish Academy wished to manifest its solidarity with the living spirit of Greece today.