The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

The citadel of Machaerus rose east of the Dead Sea on a basalt Peak shaped like a cone, girdled by four deep valleys; two about its sides, one in front, and the fourth behind.

And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

I have patience in all things - as far as the antechamber.

Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.