Several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.

That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.

Originally, poetry creates the myth, while the prose-writer draws its portrait.

What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.