The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.

For both art and the historical sciences are ways of experiencing in which our own understanding of existence is immediately brought into play.

Unlike seeing, where one can look away, one cannot 'hear away' but must listen ... hearing implies already belonging together in such a manner that one is claimed by what is being said.

The real being of language is that into which we are taken up when we hear it - what is said.

The ambiguity of poetic language answers to the ambiguity of human life as a whole, and therein lies its unique value. All interpretations of poetic language only interpret what the poetry has already interpreted.

I basically only read books that are over 2,000 years old.

The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.