The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book.

A labyrinth of symbols... An invisible labyrinth of time.

I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.

I live in a grey world, rather like the silver screen world. But yellow stands out.

The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line

At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with their large vocabularies. By the excesses of their language, these young men and women try to hide their sense of inexperience. With maturity the writer becomes more secure in his ideas. He finds his real tone and develops a simple and effective style.

There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.