We did meet forty years ago. At that time we were both influenced by Whitman and I said, jokingly in part, 'I don't think anything can be done in Spanish, do you?' Neruda agreed, but we decided it was too late for us to write our verse in English. We'd have to make the best of a second-rate literature.

I think it's all to the good that a writer shouldn't be too famous. Because, in a country where a writer may be famous, he may be pandering to the mob, celebrity and so on.

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

We are as ignorant of the meaning of the dragon as we are of the meaning of the universe.

Soccer is popular because stupidity is popular.

I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters.