What I'm really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.

In Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.

I don't think I can really believe in doomsday; I could hardly believe in rewards and punishments, in heaven or hell. As I wrote down in one of my sonnets - I seem to be always plagiarizing, imitating myself or somebody else for that matter - I think I am quite unworthy of heaven or of hell, and even of immortality.

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

The gods weave misfortunes for men, so that the generations to come will have something to sing about.” Mallarmé repeats, less beautifully, what Homer said; “tout aboutit en un livre,” everything ends up in a book. The Greeks speak of generations that will sing; Mallarmé speaks of an object, of a thing among things, a book. But the idea is the same; the idea that we are made for art, we are made for memory, we are made for poetry, or perhaps we are made for oblivion. But something remains, and that something is history or poetry, which are not essentially different.

It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.

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.