The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.

Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.

We have a very precise image - an image at times shameless - of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace 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.

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

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.