Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Each meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger.

The notion that one can liberate another soul from captivity is an illusion of the very young.

We can only learn to love by loving.

To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare's, the Cornish sea.

Most real relationships are involuntary.

Words are the most subtle symbols which we possess and our human fabric depends on them.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.