It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

In Guinea I could read [Franz] Kafka. I re-discover in him my own discomfort.

Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom-ah the soul-destroying boredom-of long days of mild content.

A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.