I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality.

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man, myself alone. From out of a whirlwind the voice of God replied: I am not, either. I dreamed the world the way you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare: one of the forms of my dream was you, who, like me, are many and one.

Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art.

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.

A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.