Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.

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

If a writer disbelieves what he is writing, then he can hardly expect his reader to believe it.

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

The mathematical sciences wield their particular language made of digits and signs, no less subtle than any other.

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

For myth is at the beginning of literature, and also at its end.