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

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.

Each thing implies the universe.

Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books. Whenever I walk into a bookstore and find a book on one of my hobbies — for example, Old English or Old Norse poetry — I say to myself, “What a pity I can’t buy that book, for I already have a copy at home.

Art always opts for the individual, the concrete; art is not Platonic.

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.