My books standing there on the shelf do not know that I have written them.

Best thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death.

If I were asked to name the chief event in my life, I should say my father's library.

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors

I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.

Censorship is the mother of metaphor.