Poets, like the blind, can see in the dark.

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.

I am interested in the past. Perhaps one of the reasons is we cannot make, cannot change the past. I mean you can hardly unmake the present. But the past after all is merely to say a memory, a dream. You know my own past seems continually changed when I am remembering it, or reading things that are interesting to me.

Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.

Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.

I have always come to life after coming to books.

It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.