He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.

Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.

I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and I"m unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet.

To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.

Captivated by its discipline, humanity forgets and goes on forgetting that it is the discipline of chess players, not of angels.